Essayist, environmentalist, educator. Burroughs was born on March 7, 1942, in Conway, South Carolina, to Franklin Gorham Burroughs, Sr. and Geraldine Bryan. In 1964 he earned his B.A. from the University of the South, and then at Harvard University he completed his A.M. in 1965 and his Ph.D. in 1970. In 1968 he began teaching at Bowdoin College in Maine, where he continued until his retirement in the fall of 2000. He was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors in 2012.<\/p>\n
Burroughs\u2019s work, often compared to that of New England essayist and poet Henry David Thoreau, was collected in Best American Essays <\/em>in 1987 and 1989. In 1989 he was awarded the Pushcart Prize for nature essays. His collection Billy Watson\u2019s Croker Sack <\/em>appeared in 1991, followed by a paperback edition in 1992. That same year his book Horry and the Waccamaw <\/em>was published, and it was later reprinted in 1998 with the title The River Home: A Return to the Carolina Low Country.<\/em><\/p>\n The River Home <\/em>tells the story of Burroughs\u2019s canoe trip down the Waccamaw River, focusing on the South Carolina counties of Horry and Georgetown, the same country landscapes that he remembered from childhood. His journey was inspired by his discovery of Nathaniel Holmes Bishop\u2019s The Voyage of the Paper Canoe <\/em>(1878), recounting that author\u2019s East Coast river voyage. Donald Dederick wrote that Burroughs\u2019s story \u201cis not simply a recapitulation of a famous canoe trip, but a well-written tribute to an area and its people, economy, and history.\u201d The River<\/em> Home <\/em>is about the intimate relationship between human beings and the land\u2013 about how people\u2019s customs and language reflect their environment in complex ways.<\/p>\n In 1999 Burroughs\u2019s \u201cCompression Wood\u201d was collected in Best American Essays. <\/em>Part literary analysis and part personal narrative of a trip to South Carolina, the piece once again takes up his familiar theme of the relationship between people and place. Driving north through Pennsylvania after visiting his native Conway, Burroughs thinks about the questions \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d and \u201cWhere do you come from?\u201d Along with philosophical speculation and poetry analysis, the essay accomplishes a sketch of a man called McIver, whom Burroughs has grown up with and who embodies his environmental values. Working with lumber salvaged from Hurricane Hugo wreckage, McIver says, \u201cPeople who don\u2019t work with primary resources don\u2019t understand reality. And not understanding reality is a functional definition of insanity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCompression Wood\u201d contains astute cultural observation as well: \u201cWhen you stop for gas in the Virginia tidewater, you hear that something has happened to the language. Tongues seem to have lost their agility. Vowels and consonants thicken and soften; cadences and sentences ooze and eddy and ebb, and you can stand there, half listening to the attendant and half thinking of the silt-laden, leisurely rivers and streams and swamps that wind through this flat country and in fact created it.\u201d The essay\u2019s insights reflect much of Burroughs\u2019s philosophy: \u201cWhere you\u2019re from is never simply a matter of geography. It involves intersections of history, economics, family, and so forth, as well as the coordinates of latitude and longitude. Self-location, with or without maps, is ultimately as complicated and incomplete a process as self-knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2009, Burroughs won the prestigious John Burroughs Award for natural history writing for his nonfiction volume entitled Confluence: Merrymeeting Bay. <\/em>With photographs by Hellen Perry, the book focuses on the residents of Maine who live at the junction of two major rivers with two separate watersheds.<\/p>\n Burroughs, Franklin. \u201cCompression Wood.\u201d American Scholar <\/em>67 (spring 1998): 123\u201337.<\/p>\n Crum, Robert. \u201cBook Reviews\u2013\u2018Billy Watson\u2019s Croker Sack\u2019 by Franklin Burroughs.\u201d Georgia Review <\/em>45 (winter 1991): 808.<\/p>\n Dederick, Donald H. \u201cSports & Recreation\u2013\u2018Horry and the Waccamaw\u2019 by Franklin Burroughs.\u201d Library Journal <\/em>117 (January 1992): 140.<\/p>\n Ives, Nancy R. \u201cLiterature\u2013\u2018Billy Watson\u2019s Croker Sack\u2019 by Franklin Burroughs.\u201d Library<\/em> Journal <\/em>116 (January 1991): 104.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Essayist, environmentalist, educator. Burroughs was born on March 7, 1942, in Conway, South Carolina, to Franklin Gorham Burroughs, Sr. and Geraldine Bryan. In 1964 he earned his B.A. from the University of the South, and then at Harvard University he completed his A.M. in 1965 and his Ph.D. in 1970. In 1968 he began teaching […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","class_list":["post-6429","entry","type-entry","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ecms-a-z","ecms-b","ecms-civil-rights-era-1955-1969","ecms-education","ecms-encyclopedia","ecms-environment-and-geography","ecms-georgetown-county","ecms-horry-county","ecms-literature","ecms-peedee","ecms-post-war-america-1946-1954","ecms-recreation-and-leisure","ecms-the-modern-state-1970-present","ecms-world-war-ii-1939-1945"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n