page_title: William S. Burroughs
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: William S. Burroughs / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: English: William S. Burroughs' childhood home on Pershing Avenue in St. louis
context_page_description: William Seward Burroughs II was an American writer and visual artist. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author whose influence affected popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians and made many appearances in films. He was also briefly known by the pen name William Lee. Burroughs created and exhibited thousands of paintings and other visual artworks, including his celebrated 'Gunshot Paintings'.
  Burroughs was born into a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. He was a grandson of inventor William Seward Burroughs I, who founded the Burroughs Corporation, and a nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs attended Harvard University, studied English, studied anthropology as a postgraduate, and attended medical school in Vienna. In 1942, Burroughs enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve during World War II.
context_section_description: Burroughs was born in 1914, the younger of two sons born to Mortimer Perry Burroughs (June 16, 1885 – January 5, 1965) and Laura Hammon Lee (August 5, 1888 – October 20, 1970). His was a prominent family of English ancestry in St. Louis, Missouri. His grandfather, William Seward Burroughs I, founded the Burroughs Adding Machine company, which evolved into the Burroughs Corporation. Burroughs' mother was Laura Hammond Lee Burroughs whose brother, Ivy Lee, was an advertising pioneer later employed as a publicist for the Rockefellers. His father ran an antique and gift shop, Cobblestone Gardens in St. Louis; and later in Palm Beach, Florida when they relocated.
  It was during his childhood that Burroughs' developed a lifelong interest in magic and the occult – topics which would find their way into his work repeatedly across the years. Burroughs later described how he saw an apparition of a green reindeer in the woods as a child, which he identified as a totem animal, as well as a vision of ghostly grey figures at play in his bedroom.
  As a boy, Burroughs lived on Pershing Avenue (now Pershing Place) in St. Louis' Central West End. He attended John Burroughs School in St. Louis where his first published essay, "Personal Magnetism" – which revolved around telepathic mind-control – was printed in the John Burroughs Review in 1929. He then attended the Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico, which was stressful for him. The school was a boarding school for the wealthy, "where the spindly sons of the rich could be transformed into manly specimens". Burroughs kept journals documenting an erotic attachment to another boy. According to his own account, he destroyed these later, ashamed of their content. He kept his sexual orientation concealed from his family well into adulthood, due to the context in which he grew up and from which he fled—that is, a "family where displays of affection were considered embarrassing". He became a well-known homosexual writer after the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959. A common story says  that he was expelled from Los Alamos after taking chloral hydrate in Santa Fe with a fellow student. Yet, according to his own account, he left voluntarily: "During the Easter vacation of my second year I persuaded my family to let me stay in St. Louis."
caption: William S. Burroughs' childhood home on Pershing Place in St. Louis
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