Her father was Assistant Attorney General for the civil division of the Department of Justice during the second term of president Dwight D.
[4] She attended Smith College, took her 1957 junior year abroad in Florence, Italy at the University of Florence, and graduated with a degree in Italian in 1958, cum laude, writing a thesis in Italian on the author Italo Svevo, and what is reality?
Later in the 1970s having moved back to Washington D.C., she wrote The Landed Gentry: Passions and Personalities Inside America’s Propertied Class as well as two plays, Penelope and The Study, and two children's books, Buccaneer—illustrated by Miki Eagle—and The Dogwalker.
[14] She has always been active in public arts, and was a founding member and past chairman of the Board of The Studio Theatre in Washington, DC.
[23][24] Merchandise was abundant, including an explosion of angel candles, books, cards, posters, and spiritual paraphernalia.
"[29] Although Burnham's oeuvre is broad and encompasses many themes from art to horses, land, psychology, animals, architecture and the Classics, she remains best known for A Book of Angels.
In the 1990s Burnham served as executive director of the Kennedy Center's Fund for New American Plays, working with Broadway producer Roger Stevens.
On March 12, 1960, Sophy Tayloe Doub married journalist and author David Bright Burnham at Christ Episcopal Church in Georgetown, Washington, DC.
In 2019 Burnham, then in her 80s, wrote an article for the "Modern Love" column of The New York Times about the romantic interest of a man 30 years her junior.
Among her good friends from the time when she lived in Taos is the bestselling writer and filmmaker Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way and many other books and films.