Edgar Rice Burroughs

Biography

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was an American novelist who became one of the most prolific and influential writers of adventure fiction in the twentieth century. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Burroughs led an unremarkable early career, drifting through jobs as a cowboy, gold miner, railroad policeman, and pencil-sharpener salesman before turning to fiction at the age of thirty-six. His first published story, Under the Moons of Mars (later retitled A Princess of Mars), appeared as a serial in 1912 and introduced readers to the swashbuckling Civil War veteran John Carter and the exotic landscape of Barsoom. That same year Burroughs created his most enduring character, Tarzan of the Apes, whose story of a British nobleman's son raised by great apes in the African jungle became a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Over the next four decades Burroughs published more than eighty novels spanning planetary romance, lost-world adventure, hollow-earth fantasy, westerns, and historical fiction. His Barsoom series ran to eleven volumes and helped shape the genre later known as science fiction, while the Tarzan saga grew to twenty-four novels plus countless adaptations in film, radio, television, and comics. He also penned the Pellucidar series set inside a hollow Earth, the Venus series, and standalone works that ranged from post-apocalyptic speculation to medieval swashbucklers. Burroughs was a masterful storyteller whose fast-paced narratives, vivid world-building, and larger-than-life heroes captivated millions of readers worldwide. He founded his own publishing company, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., to protect his literary properties, and the Los Angeles community of Tarzana was named after his ranch. His influence extends far beyond literature: scientists, filmmakers, and fellow authors from Ray Bradbury to Carl Sagan have cited his work as a formative inspiration. Burroughs died on March 19, 1950, in Encino, California, leaving behind a body of work that continues to entertain readers and inspire new adaptations well into the twenty-first century.