John BurroughsBorn 3 Apr 1837; died 29 Mar 1921 at age 83. American naturalist and author who lived and wrote after the manner of Henry David Thoreau. Burroughs studied and celebrated nature in his many essays and books. Growing up on a farm in the Catskill Mountains, Burroughs absorbed much of the nature and country life that would fill his essays in later life. As a clerk in the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War, he filled idle hours with writing about the outdoors he loved. This became his first book, Wake-Robin. Returning to the Hudson River Valley in 1873, he began fruit farming and continued to write, publishing a new book about every two years. He travelled extensively, camping out with such friends as the naturalist John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt. |
