The Burroughs mss., 1961-1963 consists of correspondence by author and artist William S. Burroughs (1914-1997). Born into wealth in St. Louis, Missouri, Burroughs later wrote essays in his youth. Between 1932 and 1936, he studied at Harvard University. After studying medicine in Vienna, Burroughs enlisted in 1942 to serve in World War II but was expelled; the disappointment from this experience may have influenced his subsequent drug addictions. He is known for autobiographic writings that explore his own heroin addiction, which equally preoccupies some of his fiction: namely, his novels Junkie (1953) and Naked Lunch (1959), the latter particularly controversial for its depictions of child murder, pedophilia, and drug use. Burroughs also wrote a trilogy of experimental novels, The Nova Trilogy, as well as important fictional works like Cities of the Red Night (1981) and The Place of Dead Roads (1983). He remains an important figure of the postmodernist novel, and some categorize him as a member of the so-called Beat Generation of the 1950s, which set out to explore drug use and sexual liberation in 1950s America.