Nature chose the spring of the year for the time of John Burroughs's birth. A little before the day when the wake-robin shows itself, that the observer might be on hand for the sight, he was born in Roxbury, Delaware County, New York, on the western borders of the Catskill Mountains; the precise date was April 3, 1837. Until 1863 he remained in the country about his native place, working on his father's farm, getting his schooling in the district school and neighboring academies, and taking his turn also as teacher. As he himself has hinted, the originality, freshness, and wholesomeness of his writings are probably due in great measure to the unliterary surroundings of his early life, which allowed his mind to form itself on unconventional lines, and to the later companionships with unlettered men, which kept him in touch with the sturdy simplicities of life. From the very beginnings of his taste for literature, the essay was his favorite form. Dr. Johnson was the prophet of his youth, but he soon transferred his allegiance to Emerson, who for many years remained his "master enchanter." To cure himself of too close an imitation of the Concord seer, which showed itself in his first magazine article, Expression, he took to writing his sketches of nature, and about this time he fell in with the writings of Thoreau, which doubtless confirmed and encouraged him in this direction. But of all authors and of all men, Walt Whitman, in his personality and as a literary force, seems to have made the profoundest impression upon Mr. Burroughs, though doubtless Emerson had a greater influence on his style of writing.
Expression appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1860, and most of his contributions to literature have been in the form of papers first published in the magazines, and afterwards collected into books. He more than once paid tribute to his teachers in literature. His first book, now out of print, was Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person, published in 1867; and Whitman: A Study, which appeared in 1896, is a more extended treatment of the man and his poetry and philosophy. Birds and Poets, too, contains a paper on Whitman, entitled The Flight of the Eagle, besides an essay on Emerson, whom he also treated incidentally in his paper, Matthew Arnold on Emerson and Carlyle, in Indoor Studies; and the latter volume contains his essay on Thoreau.
In the autumn of 1863 he went to Washington, and in the following January entered the Treasury Department. He was for some years an assistant in the office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and later chief of the organization division of that Bureau. For some time he was keeper of one of the vaults, and for a great part of the day his only duty was to be at his desk. In these leisure hours his mind traveled off into the country, where his previous life had been spent, and with the help of his pen, always a faithful friend and magician, he lived over again those happy days, now happier still with the glamour of all past pleasures. In this way he wrote Wake-Robin and a part of Winter Sunshine. It must not be supposed, however, that he was deprived of outdoor pleasures while at Washington. On the contrary, he enjoyed many walks in the suburbs of the capital, and in those days the real country came up to the very edges of the city. His Spring at the Capital, Winter Sunshine, A March Chronicle, and other papers bear the fruit of his life on the Potomac. He went to England in 1871 on business for the Treasury Department, and again on his own account a dozen years later. The record of the two visits is to be found mainly in his chapters on An October Abroad, contained in the volume Winter Sunshine, and in the papers gathered into the volume Fresh Fields.
He resigned his place in the Treasury in 1873, and was appointed receiver of a broken national bank. Later, until 1885, his business occupation was that of a National Bank Examiner. An article contributed by him to The Century Magazine for March, 1881, on Broken Banks and Lax Directors, is perhaps the only literary outcome of this occupation, but the keen powers of observation, trained in the field of nature, could not fail to disclose themselves in analyzing columns of figures. After leaving Washington Mr. Burroughs bought a fruit farm at West Park, near Esopus, on the Hudson, and there building his house from the stones found in his fields, has given himself the best conditions for that humanizing of nature which constitutes the charm of his books. He was married in 1857 to a lady living in the New York village where he was at the time teaching. He keeps his country home the year round, only occasionally visiting New York. The cultivation of grapes absorbs the greater part of his time; but he has by no means given over letters. His work, which has long found ready acceptance both at home and abroad, is now passing into that security of fame which comes from its entrance into the school-life of American children.
Besides his outdoor sketches and the other papers already mentioned, Mr. Burroughs has written a number of critical essays on life and literature, published in Indoor Studies, and other volumes. He has also taken his readers into his confidence in An Egotistical Chapter, the final one of his Indoor Studies; and in the Introduction to the Riverside Edition of his writings he has given us further glimpses of his private intellectual life.
Probably no other American writer has a greater sympathy with, and a keener enjoyment of, country life in all its phases—farming, camping, fishing, walking—than has John Burroughs. His books are redolent of the soil, and have such "freshness and primal sweetness," that we need not be told that the pleasure he gets from his walks and excursions is by no means over when he steps inside his doors again. As he tells us on more than one occasion, he finds he can get much more out of his outdoor experiences by thinking them over, and writing them out afterwards.
Numbers 28, 36, and 92 of the Riverside Literature Series consist of selections from Mr. Burroughs's books. No. 28, which is entitled Birds and Bees, is made up of Bird Enemies and The Tragedies of the Nests from the volume Signs and Seasons, An Idyl of the Honey-Bee from Pepacton, and The Pastoral Bees from Locusts and Wild Honey. The Introduction, by Miss Mary E. Burt, gives an account of the use of Mr. Burroughs's writings in Chicago schools.
In No. 36, Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers, the initial paper, Sharp Eyes, is drawn from Locusts and Wild Honey, The Apple comes from Winter Sunshine, A Taste of Maine Birch and Winter Neighbors from Signs and Seasons, and Notes by the Way (on muskrats, squirrels, foxes, and woodchucks) from Pepacton.
The collection called A Bunch of Herbs, and Other Papers, forming No. 92 of the Series, was designed with special reference to what the author has to say of trees and flowers, and contains A Bunch of Herbs from Pepacton, Strawberries from Locusts and Wild Honey, A March Chronicle and Autumn Tides from Winter Sunshine, A Spray of Pine and A Spring Relish from Signs and Seasons, and English Woods: A Contrast from Fresh Fields.