Nathaniel Burt

Burt spent six years researching and writing The Perennial Philadelphians, a 625-page social history of the city's upper class from the 17th century to the 20th. Having grown up in Wyoming, North Carolina and Maryland, he was considered an outsider, "but Mr. Burt's roots led back to an old Philadelphia family much like those he chronicled." With "biting social commentary," he traced how the great fortunes had been made (and preserved, or squandered), in "a genteel society of inherited wealth that views ambition as vulgar and not very nice." Burt wittily deciphered Old Philadelphia for the general reader:

He returned to Princeton after the war, and completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in music in 1949. His compositions included ballet, choral, orchestral, and piano music. He taught simultaneously at Princeton and Westminster Choir College, and was co-founder of the Princeton Chamber Orchestra.

Burt completed two books of poetry: Rooms in a House (1947) and Questions on a Kite (1950). He gave up teaching in 1952 to concentrate full time on writing. His first novel, Scotland's Burning (1954), was set at a boys boarding school, like the one he had attended. He wrote scholarly articles analyzing the development of drama in the libretti of early Italian operas.

He married Margaret "Winkie" Clinton (1917–2013), of Barnstable, Massachusetts, on August 5, 1941. The couple had two children, and lived in Princeton for more than 50 years. They attended Trinity Episcopal Church—where he sang in the choir and she was a member of the altar guild—and he was co-author of a 1982 history of the church. They were married for 62 years, until his death in 2003. Their son, Christopher C. Burt, is a writer and publisher, author of Extreme Weather: A Guide and Record Book (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004).

Burt's parents lived in Southern Pines, North Carolina during the winters, where he attended elementary school. He was sent to boarding school at The Saint James School in Hagerstown, Maryland, and graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1931. He attended Princeton University for a year, before dropping out and teaching in the Hoboken, New Jersey public schools. He completed an undergraduate degree at New York University's Mannes School of Music in 1939, and returned to Princeton to teach music theory in the Department of Music, 1939–1941. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1942, spent World War II in the Pacific theatre, and was discharged in 1945 as a lieutenant.

Nathaniel Burt (November 21, 1913, Jackson Hole, Wyoming – July 1, 2003, Princeton, New Jersey) was an American composer, teacher, poet, novelist and social historian. A lecturer at Princeton University and Westminster Choir College, he is best remembered for his 1963 New York Times bestseller, The Perennial Philadelphians.

He was the son of writers Struthers Burt and Katharine Newlin Burt. His father grew up in Philadelphia, the son of a prominent lawyer, and was a graduate of Princeton and Oxford University. A published poet and novelist, Struthers became a Wyoming rancher. Burt's mother wrote Western novels and short stories, several of which were adapted into screenplays for early films. They operated the Bar B C Dude Ranch, outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he was born in 1913. He had a younger sister, Julia Burt Atteberry (1915–1986). Among their neighbors was novelist (and Philadelphian) Owen Wister, who owned a nearby ranch.