William S. Burroughs

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William S. Burroughs

American writer

Also known as: William Lee, William Seward Burroughs

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Dec 19, 2024 • Article History

Quick Facts

In full:: William Seward Burroughs

Born:: February 5, 1914, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.

Died:: August 2, 1997, Lawrence, Kansas (aged 83)

Notable Works:: “And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks”; “Cities of the Red Night”; “Exterminator!”; “Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict”; “My Education: A Book of Dreams”; “Naked Lunch”; “Nova Express”; “Queer”; “The Place of Dead Roads”; “The Soft Machine”; “The Ticket that Exploded”; “The Western Lands”; “The Wild Boys”; “The Yage Letters”

Movement / Style:: Beat movement; avant-garde

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William S. Burroughs (born February 5, 1914, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died August 2, 1997, Lawrence, Kansas) was an American writer of experimental novels that evoke, in deliberately erratic prose, a nightmarish, sometimes wildly humorous world. His sexual explicitness (he was an avowed and outspoken homosexual) and the frankness with which he dealt with his experiences as a drug addict won him a following among writers of the Beat movement. Burroughs was the grandson of the inventor of the Burroughs adding machine and grew up in St. Louis in comfortable circumstances, graduating from Harvard University in 1936 and continuing study there ...(100 of 511 words)

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