Now I remember: autobiography of an amateur naturalist

by Thornton W. Burgess

"Now I Autobiography of an Amateur Naturalist" by Thornton Waldo Burgess. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Genres: Biography, Nature, Memoir

338 pages

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Thornton W. (Waldo) Burgess (1874-1965), American author, naturalist and conservationist, wrote popular children's stories including the Old Mother West Wind (1910) series. He would go on to write more than 100 books and thousands of short-stories during his lifetime.

Thornton Burgess loved the beauty of nature and its living creatures so much that he wrote about them for 50 years in books and his newspaper column, "Bedtime Stories". He was sometimes known as the Bedtime Story-Man. By the time he retired, he had written more than 170 books and 15,000 stories for the daily newspaper column.

Born in Sandwich, Massachusetts, Burgess was the son of Caroline F. Haywood and Thornton W. Burgess Sr., a direct descendant of Thomas Burgess, one of the first Sandwich settlers in 1637. Thornton W. Burgess, Sr., died the same year his son was born, and the young Thornton Burgess was brought up by his mother in Sandwich. They both lived in humble circumstances with relatives or paying rent. As a youth, he worked year round in order to earn money. Some of his jobs included tending cows, picking trailing arbutus or berries, shipping water lilies from local ponds, selling candy and trapping muskrats. William C. Chipman, one of his employers, lived on Discovery Hill Road, a wildlife habitat of woodland and wetland. This habitat became the setting of many stories in which Burgess refers to Smiling Pool and the Old Briar Patch.

Graduating from Sandwich High School in 1891, Burgess briefly attended a business college in Boston from 1892 to 1893, living in Somerville, Massachusetts, at that time. But he disliked studying business and wanted to write. He moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he took a job as an editorial assistant at the Phelps Publishing Company. His first stories were written under the pen name W. B. Thornton.

Burgess married Nina Osborne in 1905, but she died only a year later, leaving him to raise their son alone. It is said that he began writing bedtime stories to entertain his young son, Thornton III. Burgess remarried in 1911; his wife Fannie had two children by a previous marriage. The couple later bought a home in Hampden, Massachusetts, in 1925 that became Burgess' permanent residence in 1957. His second wife died in August 1950. Burgess returned frequently to Sandwich, which he always claimed as his birthplace and spiritual home.

In 1960, Burgess published his last book, "Now I Remember, Autobiography of an Amateur Naturalist," depicting memories of his early life in Sandwich, as well as his career highlights. That same year, Burgess, at the age of 86, had published his 15,000th story. He died on June 5, 1965, at the age of 91 in Hampden, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[JoAnn Hallum · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would give this five stars and maybe I should, but there were a few boring parts simply because the famous people he spoke of aren’t famous anymore and so the excitement of his interaction was lost on me. I do think this book is a must read, he has such a way of looking back on his life and his work. Lots of excellent advice, poignantly written.

[Lynsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love Thornton Burgess, you’ll love reading this! So interesting and what a great life. you get the stories behind the stories. He was so creative and hard working.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember reading aloud many of Thornton W. Burgess’s books to my children when they were young. They were particular favorites of my older daughter's. I just picked up one old scrapbook, from 1993-94, when my children were eight, six, and a few months old. A list of 33 books that I read aloud to them that year includes 11 by Burgess! I did not know until I read this autobiography that he wrote a daily newspaper column of nature stories, called “Bedtime Stories,” that ran for nearly FIFTY years! Not only that, but he also did a radio program for many years, and a nationwide nature club of his listeners was formed.

In my favorite chapter of this book, Teaching and Taught, Burgess talks about how nature study is crucial to “the most successful mental, moral, and spiritual development of the child,” and how stories, with “morals…pointed at the animal characters and not at the children” are a wonderful way to teach those lessons. Aside from giving his animal characters speech, so that they might tell their stories, Burgess stayed true to the actual behavior of the animals. He had a horror of being what President Theodore Roosevelt called a “nature faker” – a writer whose characters are romanticized and do things that animals never do.

I’m so glad I read this book now – just in time to start sharing Thornton Burgess’s stories with my two-year-old granddaughter!