Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style Is Available Today...


I featured author Mark Garvey as a Blogger of the Week a while back, and I'm happy to report that his new book Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is now available. Fans of Strunk & White's guide will find his exhaustively researched history of Elements fascinating (I did!) and his writing style engaging. You can feel his Elements enthusiasm oozing from the text.

Stylized has found a place on my nightstand along with several versions of The Elements of Style. (I like to read about style of some sort before I go to sleep. Could be from E.B. White; could be the latest issue of Vogue.)

Here's Mark on what prompted him to work on the project:

I've had a soft spot in my heart for The Elements of Style since high school. It has always seemed to me that Elements draws together, in concentrated form, the most fundamental and helpful attitudes about writing, and it is one of the books that made me want to be a writer (and editor) in the first place. A few years ago, I noticed that 2009 would mark the book's 50th anniversary, and the time seemed right for a book that considered the history and influence of Strunk and White's little book. I was lucky enough to work with the cooperation and generous help of both the Strunk and White families, and I had the pleasure of interviewing many of my favorite writers for the project.

Stylized includes more biographical detail about William Strunk than has ever been published before, including some wonderful photographs. I was also able to include some of the correspondence between E. B. White and his editors at Macmillan (the original publishers of The Elements of Style), as well as a number of notes from White to readers of Elements. E. B. White may have been the best letter writer of the twentieth century, and I'm thrilled to be able to reproduce some of his letters and notes in my book. In all, I'm excited and honored to able to pay homage in this way to a book that's been such a big influence in my life.

For the rest of my interview with Mark Garvey, click here.