Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875- 1950) was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a prosperous family. His father, George Tyler Burroughs, was a Civil War veteran. To glamourize his own origins, Burroughs has claimed that he was born in Peking at the time that his father was military advicer to the Empress of China, and lived there, in the Forbidden City, until Burroughs was ten years old. Burroughs attended several private schools, including the Michigan Military Academy, Orchar Lake (1892-95), where he was instructor and assistant commandant (1895-96). He served in the 7th Cavalry in the Arizona Territory (1896-97) and Illinois Reserve Militia (1918-19). During this period he met and heard stories of men who had fought the Sioux and Apache. After his military career Burroughs was owner of a stationery store in Pocatello, Idaho (1898), had dealings with the American Battery Company, Chicago (1899-03). In 1900 he married Emma Centennia Hulbert (divorced in 1934); they had two sons and one daughter).

For the next ten years the family lived in near poverty. Burroughs was associated with Sweetser-Burroughs Mining Company in Idaho (1903-04), was a railroad policeman in Salt Lake, Utah (1904), a manager of a stenographic department at Sears, Roebuck and Company in Chicago (1906-08), a partner of an advertising agency (1908-09), an office manager (1909), a partner of a sales firm (1910-11). In 1910-11 Burroughs worked for Champlain Yardley Company, and from 1912 to 1913 he was manager of System Service Bureau.

Before Tarzan, Burroughs led a life full of failures. The turning point came when he started to write for pulps at the age of 35 - firmly convinced that he could write as rotten stuff as was published in pulp fiction magazines. His first professional sale was 'Under the Moons of Mars', serialized in 1912. It introduced the popular invincible hero John Carter. He is transported to Mars apparently by astral projection, following a battle with Apaches in Arizona. Carter's adventures were published in book form under the title A PRINCESS OF MARS in 1917. The 'Martian' series eventually reached eleven books. Other popular series from Burroughs's pen were The Carson of Venus books, blending romance and comedy, the Pellucidar tales, located inside the Earth, and The Land That Time Forgot trilogy - totalling some 68 titles.

Burroughs's first successful story was 'Dejah Thoris, Princess of Mars' which appeared in 1912 in All-Story Magazine. A few months later in 1912 his breakthrough novel TARZAN OF THE APES appeared, followed by 24 other Tarzan adventures. ''If I had striven for long years of privation and effort to fit myself to become a writer,'' Burroughs later told, ''I might be warranted in patting myself on the back, but God knows I did not work and still do not understand how I happened to succeed.'' In 1913 Burroughs founded his own publishing house Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises and Burroughs-Tarzan Pictures were founded in 1934.

To read books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, select from the list on the left.