Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Chicago, September 1, 1875-Encino, Los Angeles, March 19, 1950) was an American fantasy writer, famous for his series of Barsoom stories (set on Mars), Pellucidar (which take place in the center of the Earth), the Venus cycle with Carson Napier as the main character and, especially, for the creation of the world famous Tarzan.

Biography

Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875, in Chicago, Illinois (for many years he lived in suburban Oak Park), the fourth son of businessman and Civil War veteran Major George Tyler Burroughs (1833-1913) and from his wife Maria Evaline (Zieger) Burroughs (1840-1920). His middle name comes from his paternal grandmother, Mary Rice Burroughs (1802-ca. 1870).

Burroughs was educated at several local schools, and during the Chicago flu epidemic of 1891, he spent a year and a half on his brother's ranch on the Balsa River in Idaho. He subsequently attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and then the Michigan Military Academy. He graduated in 1895, and failing the entrance exam for the United States Military Academy (West Point), he ended up as an enlisted soldier with the 7th US Cavalry at Fort Grant, Arizona Territory.. After being diagnosed with a heart problem and therefore unfit for service, he was discharged in 1897.

Next, he worked a few short jobs seemingly unrelated to his first calling, while he returned to the ranch in Idaho. Burroughs began working at his father's firm in 1899, and married childhood sweetheart Emma Hulbert in January 1900. In 1904 he left his employment and found less regular jobs, some in Idaho and later In Chicago.

In 1911, after seven years of low wages, he worked as a pencil sharpener wholesaler and began writing fiction. At this time, Burroughs and Emma had two children, Joan (1908-1972), who would later marry film actor James Pierce (player of Tarzan), and Hulbert (1909-1991). During this period, he had abundant free time and began to read many adventure magazines (popularly called & # 34; pulp fiction & # 34;, due to the yellowish appearance of the cheap paper with which they were printed). In 1929, he recalled thinking that & # 34;... If people paid for such rotten writing as I have read in some of those magazines, I could write just as rotten stories. I take for granted that, although I have never written a short story, I was completely unaware that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably much better than the ones I had the opportunity to read in those magazines". With the aim of putting his work in these "pulp fiction" magazines, Burroughs wrote his first short story, "Under the Moons of Mars", serialized in All Magazine. -Story in 1912.

Burroughs was soon writing full-time, and by the time the editorial run for "Under the Moons of Mars" As he was finishing, he had finished two novels, including "Tarzan of the Apes," which was published in October 1912 and became one of his most successful series. In 1913, Burroughs and Emma had their third and last child, John Coleman Burroughs (1913-1979).

He also wrote popular science fiction, with fantasy stories involving Earth adventurers transported to various planets (most notably Barsoom, Burroughs's fictional name for Mars, and Amtor, his fictional name for Venus); lost islands and the interior of the hollow earth in his stories of Pellucidar; as well as westerns and historical romances. Along with All-Story , many of his short stories were published in The Argosy .

Tarzan was a cultural sensation when he appeared. Burroughs was determined to capitalize on Tarzan's popularity in every way possible. He planned to exploit the character through several different media, including the syndicated comic strip 'Tarzan', movies, and various merchandise. The experts advised against this type of promotion, affirming that the different means of communication end up competing against each other. However, Burroughs went ahead, proving the pundits wrong, as the public demanded the character of Tarzan in any of the ways he was offered. Tarzan is one of the most successful fictional characters to date and is a cultural icon.

Between 1915 and 1919, Burroughs took ownership of 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 community, Tarzana, California, was formed in 1927. The community known as Tarzan, in Texas, was also formally designated in 1927, when the US Postal Service accepted the name, purportedly stemming from the popularity of the first (silent) Tarzan of the Apes film, starring Elmo Lincoln, and from an early "Tarzan" published in a comic strip.

In 1923 Burroughs created his own company, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., and began printing his own books throughout the 1930s.

He divorced Emma in 1934 and married the former actress Florence Dearholt Gilbert, ex-wife of his friend Ashton Dearholt, in 1935. Burroughs adopted Dearholt's two children. The couple divorced in 1942.

At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Burroughs was a resident of Hawaii and, despite being in his late seventies, applied for permission to be a war correspondent. This permission was granted, and thus he became one of the longest-serving war correspondents in the US during World War II. When the war ended, Burroughs returned to Encino, California, where, after many health problems, he died of a heart attack on March 19, 1950, having written nearly seventy novels.

Works

Edgar Rice Burroughs' oeuvre is quite extensive, making him considered one of the most prolific American authors of the 20th century. His work includes numerous volumes devoted to science fiction, novels about the Old West, and historical accounts.

"Tarzan" Series

Martian series

The Martian series is Edgar Rice Burroughs' second longest-running and most famous series, after Tarzan. It narrates the adventures of John Carter and various other warriors and princesses on Barsoom, Burroughs' fictional Mars, which was recreated with its own fauna, flora, cities and social forms.

• A princess of Mars
• Gods of Mars
• The Lord of the War of Mars
• Thuvia, Mars' maid
• The live chess of Mars
• Mars' supreme brain
• A warrior of Mars
• Mars Swords
• The synthetic men of Mars
• Llana de Gathol
• John Carter de Mars

Venus Series

• Pirates of Venus (1934)
• Lost on Venus (1935)
• Carson of Venus (1939)
• Escape on Venus (1946)
• The Wizard of Venus (1970)

Pellucidar Series

• In the heart of the earth (1914)
• Pellucidar (1923) (text at Project Gutenberg: [1] Archived on July 5, 2008 at Wayback Machine.)
• Tanar de Pellucidar (1928)
• Tarzan in the center of the earth (1929)
• Return to the Stone Age (1937)
• The Land of Terror (1944)
• Wild hairdresser (1963)

Caspak Series

• The land forgotten by time (1918)
• People of time lost (1918)
• The abyss without time (1918)

Moon Series

• The Lady of the Moon (1926)
• Men of the Moon (1926)

• The Red Hawk

Other works of science fiction

• The lost continent (1916)
• Monster Men (1929)
• Beyond the Stars (1941)

Jungle adventure novels

• The woman of the cave (1925)
• The Eternal Wild (1925) [the custer family of Nebraska]
• The country of invisible men (1932)
• The Cannibals (1935)
• The boy and the lion (1938)

Western Novels

• The Bandit of Hell's Bend (1926)
• The Head of War (1927)
• Apache Devil (1933)
• Comanche County substitute commander (1940)

Historical novels

• The Outlaw of Torn (1927) [Second Baron War]
• Me, barbarian (1967) [Imperator Caligula]

Other jobs

• The Girl from Farris's (1916)
• The Oakdale Affair (1917)
• The Mucker (1921)
• The Return of the Mucker (1921)
• The efficiency expert (1921)
• A Hollywood girl (1923)
• Crazy king (1926) [the Custer family of Nebraska]
• The rider (1937)
• Pirate blood (1970)
• Minidoka: 937th Earl of One Mile Series M (1998)
• Lucky girl (1999)
• Marcia of the Doorstep (1999)
• The forgotten stories of love and death (2001)