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Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875 -
March 19, 1950) was an American author, best known for his creation of
the jungle hero Tarzan, although he produced works in many genres.
****
Biography
Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875 in
Chicago, Illinois (although he later lived for many years in the
neighboring suburb of Oak Park), the son of a businessman. He was
educated at a number of local schools, and during the Chicago influenza
epidemic in 1891 spent a half year on his brothers' ranch on the Raft
River in Idaho. He then attended the Phillips Academy in Andover and
then the Michigan Military Academy. Graduating in 1895, and failing the
entrance exam for West Point, he ended up as an enlisted soldier with
the Seventh Cavalry in Arizona. After being diagnosed with a heart
problem and thus found ineligible for promotion to officer class, he was
discharged in 1897.
What followed was a string of seemingly
unrelated and short stint jobs. Following a period of drifting and ranch
work in Idaho, Burroughs found work at his father's firm in 1899. He
married Emma Centennia Hulbert in 1900. In 1904 he left his job and
found less regular work, initially in Idaho but soon back in Chicago.
By 1911, after seven years of low wages, he
was working as a pencil sharpener wholesaler and began to write fiction.
By this time Burroughs and Emma had two children, Joan and Hulbert.
During this period, he had copious spare time and he began reading many
pulp fiction magazines and claimed:
"...if people were paid for writing rot
such as I read in some of those magazines that I could write stories
just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had never written a
story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining
and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those
magazines."
Aiming his work at the 'pulp' magazines
then in circulation, his first story "Under the Moons of Mars" was
serialized in All-Story magazine in 1912 and earned Burroughs US$400.
Burroughs soon took up writing full-time
and by the time the run of "Under the Moons of Mars" had finished he had
completed two novels, including Tarzan of the Apes which was published
from October 1912 and went on to become his most successful brand. In
1913, Burroughs and Emma welcomed their third and last child, John
Coleman.
Burroughs also wrote popular science
fiction/fantasy stories involving Earthly adventurers transported to
various planets (notably Barsoom, Burroughs' fictional name for Mars),
lost islands, and into the interior of the hollow earth in his
Pellucidar stories, as well as westerns and historical romances. Along
with All-Story, many of his stories were published in the Argosy
Magazine.
Tarzan was a cultural sensation when
introduced. Burroughs was determined to capitalize on Tarzan's
popularity in every way possible. He planned to exploit Tarzan through
several different media including a syndicated Tarzan comic strip,
movies and merchandise. Experts in the field advised against this course
of action, stating that the different media would just end up competing
against each other. Burroughs went ahead, however, and proved the
experts wrong—the public wanted Tarzan in whatever fashion he was
offered. Tarzan remains one of the most successful fictional characters
to this day and is a cultural icon.
In 1923 Burroughs set up his own company,
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., and began printing his own books through the
1930s. He divorced Emma in 1934 and married former actress Florence
Gilbert Dearholt in 1935, ex-wife of his friend, Ashton Dearholt,
adopting the Dearholt's two children. They divorced in 1942. At the time
of the attack on Pearl Harbor he was a resident of Hawaii and, despite
being a sexagenarian, he spent the conflict as a war correspondent. He
died in Encino, California on March 19, 1950 having written almost
seventy novels.
The town of Tarzana, California was named
after Tarzan. In 1919 Burroughs purchased a large ranch north of Los
Angeles, California which he named "Tarzana". The citizens of the
community that sprang up around the ranch voted to adopt that name when
their town was incorporated in 1928.
The Burroughs crater on Mars is named in
Burroughs' honor.
Selected Bibliography
John Carter of Mars Series
A Princess of Mars (1912)
The Gods of Mars (1918)
The Warlord of Mars (1914)
Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920)
The Chessmen of Mars (1922)
The Master Mind of Mars (1928)
A Fighting Man of Mars (1931)
Swords of Mars (1936)
Synthetic Men of Mars (1940)
Llana of Gathol (1948)
John Carter of Mars (1964)
Tarzan Series
Tarzan Of The Apes (1912)
The Return of Tarzan (1913)
The Beasts Of Tarzan (1914)
The Son of Tarzan (1914)
Tarzan And The Jewels Of Opar (1916)
Jungle Tales Of Tarzan (1919)
Tarzan The Untamed (1920)
Tarzan The Terrible (1921)
Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1923)
Tarzan and the Ant Men (1924)
The Tarzan Twins (1927)
Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (1927)
Tarzan and the Lost Empire (1928)
Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929)
Tarzan the Invincible (1930)
Tarzan Triumphant (1931)
Tarzan and the Leopard Men (1932)
Tarzan and the City of Gold (1932)
Tarzan the Magnificent (1936)
Tarzan and the Forbidden City (1938)
Tarzan and the Jungle Murders (1940)
Tarzan and the Champion (1940)
Tarzan and the Madman (1964)
Tarzan and the Foreign Legion (1947)
Pellucidar
At the Earth's Core (1914)
Pellucidar (1923)
Tanar of Pellucidar (1928)
Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929)
Back to the Stone Age (1937)
Land of Terror (1944)
Savage Pellucidar (1963)
Venus Series
Pirates of Venus (1934)
Lost on Venus (1935)
Carson of Venus (1939)
Escape on Venus (1946)
The Wizard of Venus (1970)
Caspak Series
The Land That Time Forgot (1918)
The People That Time Forgot (1918
[mislabeled as "People Out of Time"]
Out of Time's Abyss (1918)
Other Works
The Efficiency Expert (1921)
The Lost Continent (1916)
The Mad King (1926)
The Monster Men (1929)
The Mucker (1921)
The Oakdale Affair (1917)
The Outlaw of Torn (1927)
The Moon Maid (1926)
The Moon Men (1926)
I am a Barbarian (1967)
Forgotten Tales of Love and Murder (2001)
****
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