Tarzan remains one of the most successful fictional characters to this day and is a cultural icon. Burroughs went ahead, however, and proved the experts wrong-the public wanted Tarzan in whatever fashion he was offered. Experts in the field advised against this course of action, stating that the different media would just end up competing against each other. He planned to exploit Tarzan through several different media including a syndicated Tarzan comic strip, movies and merchandise. Burroughs was determined to capitalize on Tarzan's popularity in every way possible.
Tarzan was a cultural sensation when introduced. Along with All-Story, many of his stories were published in the Argosy Magazine. In 1913, Burroughs and Emma had their third and last child, John Coleman.īurroughs also wrote popular science fiction and fantasy stories involving Earthly adventurers transported to various planets (notably Barsoom, Burroughs' fictional name for Mars, and Amtor, his fictional name for Venus), lost islands, and into the interior of the hollow earth in his Pellucidar stories, as well as westerns and historical romances. 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."Īiming his work at these pulp fiction magazines, his first story "Under the Moons of Mars" was serialized in All-Story Magazine in 1912 and earned Burroughs US $400 (roughly $8800 in 2009).īurroughs 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 begin his most successful series. ".if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, that I could write stories just as rotten. During this period, he had copious spare time and he began reading many pulp fiction magazines. By this time Burroughs and Emma had two children, Joan and Hulbert. In 1904 he left his job and found less regular work, initially in Idaho but soon back in Chicago.īy 1911, after seven years of low wages, he was working as a pencil sharpener wholesaler and began to write fiction. They had three children: Joan Burroughs (Mrs. He married Emma Centennia Hulbert on January 1, 1900. Following a period of drifting and ranch work in Idaho, Burroughs found work at his father's firm in 1899. What followed was a string of seemingly unrelated and short stint jobs. After being diagnosed with a heart problem and thus found ineligible for a commission, he was discharged in 1897.
Cavalry in Fort Grant, Arizona Territory. Graduating 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 U.S. He then attended the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and then the Michigan Military Academy. He was educated at a number of local schools, and during the Chicago influenza epidemic in 1891, he spent a half year at his brother's ranch on the Raft River in Idaho. Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875, in Chicago (he later lived for many years in the neighboring suburb of Oak Park), the fourth son of a businessman and Civil war veteran, Major George Tyler Burroughs (1833–1913) and his wife Mary Evaline (Zieger) Burroughs (1840–1920).