Background
John Horne Burns was born on October 7, 1916, in Andover, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Joseph Burns, a lawyer, and Catherine Home. He was the eldest of seven children.
John Horne Burns
Burns in 1947 with James A. Michener and others.
Burns on war time service in Italy
180 Main St, Andover, MA 01810, United States
Burns studied at Phillips Academy.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Burns attended Harvard.
(John Horne Burns brought The Gallery back from World War ...)
John Horne Burns brought The Gallery back from World War II, and on publication in 1947 it became a critically-acclaimed bestseller. However, Burns's early death at the age of 36 led to the subsequent neglect of this searching book, which captures the shock the war dealt to the preconceptions and ideals of the victorious Americans.
https://www.amazon.com/Gallery-York-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590170806/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=John+Horne+Burns%2C+The+Gallery&qid=1577350633&s=books&sr=1-1
1947
John Horne Burns was born on October 7, 1916, in Andover, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Joseph Burns, a lawyer, and Catherine Home. He was the eldest of seven children.
The precocious boy attended the convent school of the Sisters of Notre Dame from the age of five. At thirteen he studied at Andover Academy, where he joined the choir. Burns cultivated a preference for solitude at Harvard University, where he concentrated on music and literature. He graduated in 1937.
After graduation, Burns began teaching English at Loomis School in Windsor, Connecticut. As a teacher, Burns soon became disillusioned with American education and based a later novel, Lucifer with a Book, on his experience in Loomis.
During World War II, Burns spent in Europe, Casablanca, and Algiers and then for a year and a half in Italy with military intelligence. Burns began as a private in the infantry and rose to the rank of second lieutenant, but found this experience disillusioning as well. He began to doubt the American way of life, a doubt that would haunt his writing.
Bums returned to Loomis after the war in 1946, but left again after the publication of The Gallery, and a disagreement with the headmaster. He settled in Boston. Back in Boston, he worked on travel pieces for the magazine, Holiday, and on a second novel, Lucifer with a Book.
His second novel, Lucifer with a Book appeared in 1949 to largely unfavorable reviews. Burns returned to Italy in 1950, this time choosing Florence. There he wrote his last published work, A Cry of Children (1952), which was marketed as "a merciless novel" of "young love in the Bohemian fringe-world". His fourth novel was left unfinished at his death.
(John Horne Burns brought The Gallery back from World War ...)
1947Quotations: "In Italy, it’s more human to weep than to laugh. I weep because I can't figure out the mess and other Americans were in."
John Horne Burns exploded onto the post-World War II literary scene only to peter out with more sensationalistic, weaker novels and early death. A loner with strong convictions about society’s hypocrisies and the possibilities of human creativity, Burns completed three novels and started another before his death at the age of thirty-six.
Perhaps Burns’s experiences taught him to be open about his homosexuality; at the least he learned to relinquish his American machoism and weep freely.
Quotes from others about the person
"Despite the problems of his later works, John Home Burns has a place in American literature. Many critics consider The Gallery the best book about World War II." - David Byrd