Lets have a big Tarzan birthday yell for American fantasy adventure writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, born September 1, 1875. A failure at multiple business ventures as a young man, Burroughs was struggling to support his family as a pencil sharpener salesman by day and relaxing by reading pulp fiction magazines at night when, as he later recalled, he said to himself: if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, [then] I could write stories just as rotten. 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. (In this, he follows the example of early nineteenth century American adventure writer James Fenimore Cooper, who also embarked on his novel writing career after throwing down an ill-written popular novel in impatience.) Burroughss first published long story Under the Moons of Mars (later _A Princess of Mars_) in 1912 was an instant success, followed closely by the popular jungle fantasy _Tarzan of the Apes_, notable for a long scene in which the young ape man learns to read English by poring over little black bugs in a book found in the ruins of his dead parents cabin. Burroughs went on to publish between 2-5 serialized novels and short stories per year until the mid 1940s. His canny control of book copyrights and dozens of film options sold made him a wealthy man indeed.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 12:28:20 +0000