John Burroughs

John Burroughs (1837-1921), American naturalist and essayist, born in Roxbury, New York, and educated at Cooperstown Seminary. Beginning his career as a teacher, Burroughs subsequently worked as a clerk in the United States Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., from 1864 to 1873. He published poetry and nature essays during this period and also became close friends with the American poet Walt Whitman. Burroughs's first book, Notes on Walt Whitman, Poet and Person (1867), was the earliest serious public recognition Whitman received. In 1873 Burroughs moved to New York State, where he worked as a federal bank examiner. He devoted his spare time to writing, studying nature, and raising fruit. He wrote in the tradition of American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and Burroughs enjoyed the friendship of many important people of his day who also were nature lovers, including John Muir, Thomas Alva Edison, Henry Ford, and Theodore Roosevelt. Burroughs lived in the Catskill Mountain area for the rest of his life, but traveled to many parts of the world recording his observations of the beauties of nature. His writings did much to promote popular interest in nature study. Among his best-known works are Wake Robin (1871), Locusts and Wild Honey (1879), Breath of Life (1915), and Bird and Bough (1906), his one volume of poetry.