Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1875 -1950 American popular novelist. Burroughs was educated at a military academy and served briefly in the US cavalry, but failed to find a successful career until he began to write for the pulp magazines in 1912, during which year he published the first of his many interplanetary fantasies (reprinted in 1917 as "Princess of Mars") and the first of many novels starting Tarzan, an English aristocrat raised in the African jungle by apes. He wrote extravagant and exotic adventure stories, which might be considered the ultimate daydreams. Tarzan remains his most enduring success, having some significance as a modern hero-myth despite the injury done to the character by many poor films. Burroughs's work deteriorated after 1935, thereafter consisting mainly of lack-lustre sequels, but his early books have an appealing escapist verve which overrides their essential silliness.
