The American naturalist and essayist John Burroughs (1837-1921) wrote prolifically of his experiences in nature and was one of America's most honored writers at the beginning of the 20th century.

The seventh of 10 children of Chauncy and Amy Kelly Burroughs, John Burroughs was born on the family dairy farm in the Catskill Mountains near Roxbury, N.Y., on April 3, 1837. He left school at 17 to become a teacher, and he alternated periods of teaching with brief studies at such institutions as Cooperstown Seminary, where he developed enthusiasm for the work of William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson. At 20, he married Ursula North, but 2 years passed before his teaching yielded enough money for the couple to set up housekeeping. He was only 23 when James Russell Lowell accepted his essay "Expression" for the Atlantic Monthly. The essay sounded so much like Emerson's work that Lowell at first suspected it had been...