Ten fun facts about John Burroughs
Fact 1
According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress, John Burroughs was the most important practitioner after Henry David Thoreau of that especially American literary genre, the nature essay.
Fact 2
By the turn of the 20th century he had become a virtual cultural institution in his own right.
Fact 3
He was regarded as the Grand Old Man of Nature at a time when the American romance with the idea of nature, and the American conservation movement, had come fully into their own.
Fact 4
His extraordinary popularity and popular visibility were sustained by a prolific stream of essay collections, beginning with Wake-Robin in 1871.
Fact 5
In 1899, he participated in E. H. Harriman's expedition to Alaska.
Fact 6
Twelve U.S. schools have been named after Burroughs.
Fact 7
There was a medal named after John Burroughs and the John Burroughs Association publicly recognizes well-written and illustrated natural history publications.
Fact 8
Among Burroughs's classmates was future financier Jay Gould.
Fact 9
Burroughs got his first break as a writer in the summer of 1860 with the Atlantic Monthly, then a fairly new publication.
Fact 10
In 1874, Burroughs bought a 9-acre farm in West Park, NY (now part of the Town of Esopus) where he built his Riverby estate.
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