Stewart Edward White was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

.

Biography

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located on the Grand River about 40 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 774,160 and a combined statistical area, Grand...

 he attended Grand Rapids High School

Central High School (Grand Rapids, Michigan)

Central High School, founded in 1911, is a public high school located at 421 Fountain Street NE in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The high school offers classes for grades 9-12. The school colors are Gold and Black and the school mascot is the Ram.-History:...

, and earned degrees from University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 (B.A., 1895; M.A., 1903).

From about 1900 until about 1922, he wrote fiction and non-fiction about adventure and travel, with an emphasis on natural history and outdoor living. Starting in 1922, he and his wife Elizabeth "Betty" Grant White wrote numerous books they say were received through channelling

Mediumship

Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...

 with spirit

Spirit

The English word spirit has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body.The spirit of a living thing usually refers to or explains its consciousness.The notions of a person's "spirit" and "soul" often also overlap,...

s. They also wrote of their travels around the state of California. White died in Hillsborough, California

Hillsborough, California

Hillsborough is an incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hillsborough is one of the wealthiest communities in America and has the highest income of places in the United States with populations of at least 10,000...

.

White's books were popular at a time when America was losing its vanishing wilderness. He was a keen observer of the beauties of nature and human nature, yet could render them in a plain-spoken style. Based on his own experience, whether writing camping journals or Westerns, he included pithy and fun details about cabin-building, canoeing, logging, gold-hunting, and guns and fishing and hunting. He also interviewed people who had been involved in the fur trade, the California gold rush and other pioneers which provided him with details that give his novels verisimilitude. He salted in humor and sympathy for colorful characters such as canny Indian guides and "greenhorn" campers who carried too much gear. White also illustrated some of his books with his own photographs. Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 wrote that White was "the best man with both pistol and rifle who ever shot" at Roosevelt's rifle range at Sagamore Hill.

Quotes

Here's a sample passage from THE CABIN of 1911, the chapter "On Strangers".

Whenever you see a dust through the trees, you look first to make sure it is not raised by stray cattle. Then when you are certain of your horse and man, you start a fire in the little stove. That is the invariable rule in the [California] mountains.

The logic is simple, unanswerable, and correct. The presence of the man argues that he has ridden from some distant point, for here all points are more or less distant; and the fact in turn proves that somewhat of exercise and space have intervened last he has eaten. Therefore, no matter what the time of day, you feed him. It works out like a mathematical formula.

Similarly in other camps, after you have chatted for a few moments, some one will slip quietly away. A sound of splitting crackles, a thin, fragrant smoke odour enters your nostrils. After an interval there is brought to you a lunch to which your attention is invited. The lunch varies from beans to a tin plate and rank coffee in a tin cup, to tea and yeast-bread, and gooseberry jelly and layer cake, according to whose camp you may happen to be in. But its welcome is the same, and you find yourself responding avidly at ten o'clock in the morning to the cordial invitation, "eat hearty". Such is mountain hospitality and mountain convention. It is as much a matter of course as the urban ring at the door bell, and is no more to be omitted than the offer of a chair.

"Light and rest yo' hat"; "Eat hearty"; "Take care of yoreself." These three speeches can cover the entire gamut of good-fellowship - greeting, entertainment, and good-bye.

Honors

In 1927, the Boy Scouts of America

Boy Scouts of America

The Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over 4.5 million youth members in its age-related divisions...

 made White an Honorary Scout, a new category of Scout created that same year. This distinction was given to "American citizens whose achievements in outdoor activity, exploration and worthwhile adventure are of such an exceptional character as to capture the imagination of boys...". The other eighteen who were awarded this distinction were: Roy Chapman Andrews

Roy Chapman Andrews

Roy Chapman Andrews was an American explorer, adventurer and naturalist who became the director of the American Museum of Natural History. He is primarily known for leading a series of expeditions through the fragmented China of the early 20th century into the Gobi Desert and Mongolia...

; Robert Bartlett; Frederick Russell Burnham

Frederick Russell Burnham

Frederick Russell Burnham, DSO was an American scout and world traveling adventurer known for his service to the British Army in colonial Africa and for teaching woodcraft to Robert Baden-Powell, thus becoming one of the inspirations for the founding of the international Scouting Movement.Burnham...

; Richard E. Byrd; George Kruck Cherrie

George Kruck Cherrie

George Kruck Cherrie was an American naturalist and explorer.Cherrie was born in Iowa. He took part in about forty expeditions, mostly to Central and South America, including Theodore Roosevelt's South American Expedition of 1913–1914, when Cherrie was collecting specimens for the American Museum...

; James L. Clark; Merian C. Cooper

Merian C. Cooper

Merian Caldwell Cooper was an American aviator, United States Air Force and Polish Air Force officer, adventurer, screenwriter, and film director and producer. His most famous film was the 1933 movie King Kong.-Early life:...

; Lincoln Ellsworth

Lincoln Ellsworth

Lincoln Ellsworth was an arctic explorer from the United States.-Birth:He was born on May 12, 1880 to James Ellsworth and Eva Frances Butler in Chicago, Illinois...

; Louis Agassiz Fuertes

Louis Agassiz Fuertes

Louis Agassiz Fuertes was an American ornithologist, illustrator and artist.-Biography:Fuertes was the son of Estevan and Mary Stone Perry Fuertes....

; George Bird Grinnell

George Bird Grinnell

George Bird Grinnell was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. Grinnell was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in 1870 and a Ph.D. in 1880. Originally specializing in zoology, he became a prominent early conservationist and student...

; Charles A. Lindbergh; Donald Baxter MacMillan; Clifford H. Pope; George P. Putnam

George P. Putnam

George Palmer Putnam was an American publisher, author and explorer. Known for his marriage to and being the widower of Amelia Earhart, he had also achieved fame as one of the most successful promoters in the United States during the 1930s.-Early life:Born in Rye, New York, he was the son of John...

; Kermit Roosevelt

Kermit Roosevelt

Kermit Roosevelt I MC was a son of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. He was an explorer on two continents with his father, a graduate of Harvard University, a soldier serving in two world wars, with both the British and U.S. Armies, a businessman, and a writer...

; Carl Rungius; Orville Wright.

Works

• The Westerners (1901)
• The Blazed Trail (1902)
• The Claim Jumpers (1901)
• Conjurer's House (1903)
• The Forest (1903)
• Blazed Trail Stories (1904)
• The Mountains (1904)
• The Silent Places (1904)
• The Pass (1906), with S. H. Adams
  Samuel Hopkins Adams
  Samuel Hopkins Adams was an American writer, best known for his investigative journalism.-Biography:Adams was born in Dunkirk, New York...
  
  
• The Mystery (1907), with S. H. Adams
• Arizona Nights (1907)
• The Riverman (1908)
• The Cabin (1910)
• The Rules of the Game (1910)
• The Land of Footprints (1912)
• African Camp Fires (1913)
• Gold (1913)
• The Gray Dawn (1915)
• The Rose Dawn (1920)
• Rediscovered Country (1915)
• The forty-niners; a chronicle of the California trail and El Dorado (1918)
• The Killer (1919)
• Daniel Boone, wilderness scout (1922)
• Lions in the path; a book of adventure on the high veldt (1926)
• Back of Beyond (1926)
• Dog days, other times, other dogs; the autobiography of a man and his dog friends through four decades of changing America (1930)
• Pole Star (1935), with Harry DeVighne
• The Betty Book (1939)
• Across the Unknown [with Harwood White] (1939)
• The Unobstructed Universe (1940)
• The Road I Know (1942)
• Anchors to Windward
• The Stars are Still There
• With Folded Wings (1947)

The Sign at Six (1912)
Wild Geese Calling (1940)
Secret Harbour (1926)
The Adventures of Bobby Orde (1910)

See also Project Gutenberg for more titles.

The Long Rifle" (1932) (This is a compilation covering the western movement from Kentucky to California. Last printed in 1987)

External links

• Stewart Edward White Biography
• Works by Stewart Edward White at LibriVox
  LibriVox
  LibriVox is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher...
  
   (audiobooks)
• Guide to the Stewart Edward White Manuscripts at The Bancroft Library