AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT SIGNED (AMS): "The Singing Birds"

July 1917. Manuscript. A few rust stains at head of first leaf (and diminishing through the fourth leaf) and verso of final leaf; tiny puncture in blank area below title on first leaf; last leaf slightly worn at edges with a crease; pencil light on a few pages. Near Fine and desirable example of a Burroughs manuscript on one of his favorite subjects. Original manuscript of an essay titled “The Singing Birds”: 21-pages in pencil with corrections, mostly on rectos of 6" x 9" sheets, SIGNED and dated by Burroughs at the conclusion. Housed in a cloth chemise and green morocco-backed clamshell box. Written in two parts, the first section headed “I” contains 5 pages of manuscript which he has re-numbered from “1[-5]” to “a[-e]” at head; the second section begins “July 14” and is headed “II” containing 15 numbered pages and one inserted unnumbered sheet. The manuscript begins: “One of the most remarkable things in animal life, to me, is the singing of birds. Perhaps the fiddling of insects is equally remarkable but it falls in the same category of remarkable biological facts, & doubtless its genesis is the same. How shall we interpret this singing? Does it bear any analogy to human singing? Is it directed to any particular end?” According to a note, which is included, on an exhibition envelope from 1934 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, this manuscript was written by Burroughs at his home in Woodchuck Lodge, in Roxbury, New York during July of 1917.

Provenance: Capt. Frank P. Castro, Jr. (pencil inscription on margin first leaf, “To Captain Frank Castro, Jr., from C. B.” [presumably Curtis Burroughs, the writer's brother]; accompanied by an original envelope from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, dated 1935, noting this manuscript was lent there by Castro as item 1542). From the William A. Strutz Library.