Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an
American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan, although he also produced works in many genres.
Encyclopedia
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an
American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan, although he also produced works in many genres.
Biography
Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875 in
Chicago, Illinois , 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
7th U.S. Cavalry in Fort Grant,
Arizona Territory. 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 is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs [i], the first in a series of books ab ...
, which was published from October 1912 and went on to become his most successful brand. In 1913, Burroughs and Emma had their third and last child, John Coleman.
Burroughs also wrote popular
science fiction/fantasy stories involving Earthly adventurers transported to various
planets , 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 Dearholts' two children. They divorced in 1942. At the time of the attack on
Pearl Harbor he was a resident of
Hawaii and, despite being in his late sixties, he spent the conflict as a war correspondent. After the war he moved back to Encino, California, where, after many health problems, he died of a heart attack 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
- A Princess of Mars is an Edgar Rice Burroughs [i] science fiction [i] novel [i], the first of his fa ...
- The Gods of Mars is a 1918 Edgar Rice Burroughs [i] science fiction novel, the second of his famous ...
- The Warlord of Mars is a Edgar Rice Burroughs [i] science fiction novel, the third of his famous Barsoom [i] ...
- Thuvia, Maid of Mars is a science fiction novel [i] by Edgar Rice Burroughs [i], the fourth of his f ...
- The Chessmen of Mars is an Edgar Rice Burroughs [i] science fiction novel, the fifth of his famous Barsoom [i] ...
- The Master Mind of Mars is an Edgar Rice Burroughs [i] science
...
Tarzan series
- Tarzan of the Apes is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs [i], the first in a series of books ab ...
- The Return of Tarzan is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs [i], the second in his series of boo...
- The Beasts of Tarzan
- The Son of Tarzan
- Tarzan and the Jewels Of Opar
- Jungle Tales of Tarzan
- Tarzan the Untamed is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs [i], the seventh in his series of book ...
- Tarzan the Terrible
- Tarzan and the Golden Lion
- Tarzan and the Ant Men
- Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle was an animated series created by the Filmation [i] studio for CBS [i]. ...
- Tarzan and the Lost Empire
- Tarzan at the Earth's Core
- Tarzan the Invincible
- Tarzan Triumphant
- Tarzan and the City of Gold
- Tarzan and the Lion Man
- Tarzan and the Leopard Men
- Tarzan's Quest
- Tarzan and the Forbidden City
- Tarzan the Magnificent
- Tarzan and the Foreign Legion
- Tarzan and the Madman
- Tarzan and the Castaways
- for younger readers
- Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins
- At the Earth's Core
- Pellucidar
- Tanar of Pellucidar
- Tarzan at the Earth's Core
- Back to the Stone Age
- Land of Terror
- Savage Pellucidar
- Pirates of Venus
- Lost on Venus
- Carson of Venus
- Escape on Venus
- The Wizard of Venus
Caspak series
- The Land That Time Forgot see also Lost World literary genre.
- The People That Time Forgot [mislabeled as "People Out of Time"]
- Out of Time’s Abyss
Moon series
- The Moon Maid
- The Moon Men
Other science fiction
- Beyond the Farthest Star
- The Lost Continent
- The Monster Men
Jungle adventure novels
- The Cave Girl
- The Eternal Savage
- The Lad and the Lion
- The Land of Hidden Men
- The Man Eater
Western novels
- Apache Devil
- The Bandit of Hell's Bend
- The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County
- The War Chief
Historical novels
Other works
- The Efficiency Expert
- The Girl from Farris's
- The Girl from Hollywood
- The Mad King
- Marcia of the Doorstep
- Minidoka: 937th Earl of One Mile Series M
- The Mucker
- The Oakdale Affair
- Pirate Blood
- The Return of the Mucker
- The Rider
- You Lucky Girl!
See also
External links
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- on SciFan
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- - contains a chronological reading order for Edgar Rice Burroughs-based novels and comic books
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- with auction price tracking
