Project Description by Professor Jeff Walker

Vassar College Special Collections has the original journals of John Burroughs, written over the period 1878-1921. We also have two different annotated transcriptions of the journals. Although selected entries from the journals have been published, the journals have never been published in their entirety. The selections that have been published appear to have been selected, and edited, to present a particular version of John Burroughs which may or may not represent his true character. In a transcription, idiosyncracies even in such things as spelling and punctuation, are useful for interpreting the ideas of the writer, yet previous transcribers have corrected both his spelling and his punctuation, removing that dimension from our view of his character. The goal of this project is to begin to publish the complete journals of John Burroughs.

The journals of John Burroughs are important for several reasons. John Burroughs was a well-known essayist at the turn of the twentieth century, and many of the ideas in his essays were worked out first in his journals. The new transcriptions will make it possible to trace the development of ideas from conception to print. He also edited material in his journals as he wrote, re-writing sentences for better effect. Seeing these edits gives us a glimpse into the way his creative process worked, which is something he wrote little about directly.

John Burroughs’s journals also are significant from an environmental studies perspective. Burroughs is considered the originator of the modern nature essay, so the journals provide information on the development of that important literary style. Burroughs also was a careful observer of nature, and recorded his observations in his journals. For this reason, the journals are an invaluable record of natural history of the mid-Hudson Valley over a span of nearly 50 years. Burroughs was especially interested in the arrivals of migratory birds and the blooming of Spring ephemeral flowers (which he recorded each year). He also reported events like the freezing over and breaking up of the Hudson River (on whose shores he lived), as well as periods of intense cold in winter and heat in summer. All of these potentially could be used to create a picture of the effects of climate change in the Hudson Valley during Burroughs’s time, or in comparison with the modern climate of the valley.