Portrait of John Burroughs

Birthday profile

John Burroughs

John Burroughs, American botanist and author (died 1921)

Born
April 3, 1837
Died
March 29, 1921
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1837

About John Burroughs

John Burroughs was an American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the conservation movement in the United States. The first of his essay collections was Wake-Robin in 1871. Burroughs had his first break as a writer in the summer of 1860 when the Atlantic Monthly, then a fairly new publication, accepted his essay Expression. In 1867, Burroughs published Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person, the first biography and critical work on the poet, which was extensively (and anonymously) revised and edited by Whitman himself before publication. Four years later, the Boston house of Hurd & Houghton published Burroughs's first collection of nature essays, Wake-Robin. Burroughs later became an atheist with an inclination towards pantheism.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

John Burroughs timeline

  1. Burroughs had his first break as a writer in the summer of 1860 when the Atlantic Monthly, then a fairly new publication, accepted his essay Expression.
  2. In 1867, Burroughs published Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person, the first biography and critical work on the poet, which was extensively (and anonymously) revised and edited by Whitman himself before publication.

The world when John Burroughs was born

John Burroughs was born in 1837. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlinePanic of 1837 — major economic depression
  • Technology milestoneSamuel Morse demonstrates electric telegraph
  • World population~1.17B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderMartin Van Buren
  • U.S. population15.8M

1837 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in John Burroughs's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18372026
Population15.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.