Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875 â€" March 19, 1950) 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 (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 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 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 (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 in his late sixties, he spent the conflict as a war correspondent. After the war he moved back to Encino, California, where he, after many health problems, 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

Barsoom series

A Princess of Mars (1912) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [1])
The Gods of Mars (1914) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[2])
The Warlord of Mars (1918) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[3])
Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[4])
The Chessmen of Mars (1922) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[5])
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) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[6])
The Return of Tarzan (1913) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[7])
The Beasts of Tarzan (1914) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[8])
The Son of Tarzan (1914) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[9])
Tarzan and the Jewels Of Opar (1916) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[10])
Jungle Tales of Tarzan (1916, 1917) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[11])
Tarzan the Untamed (1919, 1921) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[12])
Tarzan the Terrible (1921) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[13])
Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1922, 1923)
Tarzan and the Ant Men (1924)
Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (1927, 1928)
Tarzan and the Lost Empire (1928)
Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929)
Tarzan the Invincible (1930. 1931)
Tarzan Triumphant (1931)
Tarzan and the City of Gold (1932)
Tarzan and the Lion Man (1933, 1934)
Tarzan and the Leopard Men (1935)
Tarzan's Quest (1935, 1936)
Tarzan and the Forbidden City (1938)
Tarzan the Magnificent (1936, 1937)
Tarzan and the Foreign Legion (1947)
Tarzan and the Madman (1964)
Tarzan and the Castaways (1940, 1941, 1965)
*for younger readers
*Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins (1927, 1936, 1963)

Pellucidar series

At the Earth's Core (1914) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [14])
Pellucidar (1923) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [15])
Tanar of Pellucidar (1928)
Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929)
Back to the Stone Age (1937)
Land of Terror (1944)
Savage Pellucidar (1963)

Book Cover: Pirates of Venus

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) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [16]) see also Lost World literary genre.
The People That Time Forgot (1918) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [17]) [mislabeled as "People Out of Time"]
Out of Time's Abyss (1918) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [18])

Moon series

The Moon Maid (1926)
The Moon Men (1926)

Other science fiction

Beyond the Farthest Star (1941)
The Lost Continent (1916) (aka Beyond Thirty) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [19])
The Monster Men (1929) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [20])

Jungle adventure novels

The Cave Girl (1925)
The Eternal Savage (1925) (aka The Eternal Lover)
The Lad and the Lion (1938)
*The Land of Hidden Men (1932) (aka Jungle Girl)
*The Man Eater'' (1935)

Western novels

Apache Devil (1933)
The Bandit of Hell's Bend (1926)
The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County (1940)
The War Chief (1927)

Historical novels

I am a Barbarian (1967)
The Outlaw of Torn (1927) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [21])

Other works

The Efficiency Expert (1921) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [22])
*Forgotten Tales of Love and Murder (2001)
The Girl from Farris's (1916)
The Girl from Hollywood (1923)
The Mad King (1926) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [23])
Marcia of the Doorstep (1999)
Minidoka: 937th Earl of One Mile Series M (1998)
The Mucker (1921) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [24])
The Oakdale Affair (1917) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [25])
Pirate Blood (1970)
The Return of the Mucker (1921)
The Rider (1937)
You Lucky Girl! (1999)

External links

* Free ebook of Edgar Rice Burroughs at Project Gutenberg
* ERB FAQ
* Works at Project Gutenberg Australia
* Burroughs Facts and Articles
* Burroughs Tribute Site
* Weekly Edgar Rice Burroughs Webzine
* Archive of over 3,000 Burroughs Webpages
* Tarzan.org, Burroughs Inc. official site
* The Tarzana Project: New Edgar Rice Burroughs Books
* The Dream Vaults of Opar
* Official biography of Burroughs
* Bibliography on SciFan
* Snopes.com entry debunking the theory that Tarzana was named after Tarzan (joke)
* Snopes.com entry debunking the Snopes.com entry debunking the theory that Tarzana was named after Tarzan
* Chronology Central's Edgar Rice Burroughs page - contains a chronological reading order for Edgar Rice Burroughs-based novels and comic books
* NY Times article on Burroughs
* Review of John Taliaferro's biography of Burroughs
* ERB collectors site with auction price tracking

Edgar Rice Burroughs: Encyclopedia BETA

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