A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
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Life and Works: American novelist, creator of the world famous character of Tarzan, one of the indispensable icons of popular culture. Burroughs also published science fiction and crime novels, some 26 novels dealt with the Apeman. Critics have considered Burroughs's fiction often crudely written and chauvinist. His books, however, are still widely read and usually more interesting than the films. It is true that Burroughs often portrayed Africans, Arabs or Asians as evil or comic, but the stories also contain several elements that have kept them 'politically correct': Waziri warriors are brave, and his cave girl Nadara and Dejah Thoris, the princess of Mars, are courageous and resourceful characters. Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a prosperous family. He was sent to the private schools of Chicago and then off to the Philip Academy in Andover, Mass. Something went wrong there and Edgar was expelled. Burroughs returned to the midwest and was placed in a military academy in Michigan. Eventually, Edgar joined the US Cavalry and was sent to Arizona. That didn't work out either, and with family intervention, Edgar gave up the military life, prematurely. In 1900 he married Emma Centennia Hulbert (divorced in 1934); they had two sons and one daughter). The next ten years the family lived near poverty. His marriage helped Edgar offset numerous, unsuccessful business ventures that seemed to have no end. At age 35, Burroughs tried his hand at writing fiction. Burroughs first published story, Under the Moon of Mars, appeared in 1911 in All-Story pulp magazine introducing the popular invincible hero John Carter, who is transported to Mars apparently by astral projection, following a battle with Apaches in Arizona. The 'Martian' series eventually reached eleven books. The first Tarzan story appeared in 1912, and, in 1914, Tarzan of the Apes was published in novel form and would be the first of 25 Tarzan books. Tarzan, through popular acceptance and demand controlled Edgar's future. Especially, after the movies began (in 1918) and Tarzan moved into the folk culture of the nation. When the Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller took the role in the 1930's, the films became really popular. In 1913 Burroughs founded his own publishing house Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. The world famous protagonist in Tarzan books is John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, whose aristocratic parents, John Clayton and his wife, Lady Alice, are abandoned on the west coast of Africa by mutinous sailors. Lady Alice dies insane and his father is killed by a great ape named Kerchak. Tarzan raised by an ape, Kala, and grows into a leader of the hairy tribe due to his intelligence and fighting skills. In the jungle Tarzan learns to read when he founds a book from the remnants of his parents hut. Another party of whites is marooned at the same west coast - the Porters from Baltimore and William Clayton, the present Lord Greystoke. During the tale, Tarzan finds love, becomes a hero, and finds his aristocratic roots. Tarzan falls in love with Jane Porter, but in the Tarzan of the Apes, Jane rejects his offer of marriage and accepts the proposal of William Greystoke. Eventually Jane Porter becomes Tarzan's wife, and they also have a son. With the help of animals - mostly elephants and apes - Tarzan gains the unofficial status of the king of the jungle, and gains immortality through an African shaman's secret formula. In several Tarzan books the invincible hero is involved with lost races, hidden cultures, or even with an entire lost continent, but never shows any inclination of taking more than ones share of fortunes during his adventures. During his long career in the jungle, Tarzan battles against Germans, Japanese, and communits. In addition to his four major adventure series, Burroughs wrote between the years 1912 and 1933 several other adventure novels, among them The cave girl (1925), in which a weak aristocrat develops into a warrior, two Western novels about a white Apache, The war chief (1927) and Apache devil (1933), showing sympathy for Native Americans, and Beyond the farthest star (1964), a science-fiction novel about the brutality of war. Burrough's science fiction novels are full of sense of adventure, taking the reader on a fantastic voyage to chart strange and unfamiliar lands like Homer did in his Odyssey. The land that time forgot (1924) is a Darwinist story set on a mysterious island near the South Pole, where dinosaurs and other primitive species have survived. The Pellucidar series started from At the Earth's core (1922), in which a group of scientist use their drilling machine to tunnel down into the hollow space at the centre of the planet. Like in Jules Verne's A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) they find new life forms which have survived for millions of years. Also Tarzan visits this subterranean world without time in Tarzan at the Earth's core (1930). Burrough's created the Venus sequence, concerning the exploits of spaceman Carson Napier, relatively late in his career, in the 1930s. Pirates of Venus appeared in 1934 and the last book, Escape on Venus, in 1946. A posthumous story, Wizard of Venus, was published in 1964. Burroughs died of a heart ailment on March 19, in 1950. After Burroughs's death, enthusiasm for his books gradually waned. While criticized as repetitious and clumsy, Burroughs's stories share the same colourful imagination familiar from the classic works of H.G. Wells and H. Rider Haggard. Burroughs's novels have also became target for academic research. John F. Kasson's interpretation in The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (2001) brings to the fore "the urge to recover a primitive freedom and wildness." Kasson sees Tarzan as the ultimate self-made, self-autorbusght man, who challenges the restrictions of modern civilization, and shows his own answer to the "new crisis of masculinity". Selected works:
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Free electronic books from E.R. Burroughs |
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