View source for Edgar Rice Burroughs

== Biography ==

Edgar Rice Burroughs was born on 1 September 1875 in [[Chicago]], [[Illinois]], the son of a [[American Civil War|Civil War]] veteran. He was educated at several local private schools, including the [[Michigan Military Academy]]. His studies were interrupted by the Chicago [[influenza]] epidemic of 1891, during which time he was sent to his brother's ranch on the [[Raft River]] in [[Idaho]].

Upon graduating in 1895 and failing the entrance examination for [[West Point]], he joined the [[7th Cavalry]] as an enlisted soldier, serving in the [[Arizona Territory]]. He was discharged in 1897, having been diagnosed with a heart condition. He later returned to military service, joining the [[Illinois Reserve Militia]] between 1918 and 1919.

He found work in his father's stationery company in 1899, after a period of drifting and ranch work in [[Idaho]]. In 1900, he married Emma Centennia Hulbert, although they were later to divorce in 1934. He resigned from his job in 1904 and for the next 7 years drifted between a number of poorly paying occupations, including a gold miner, a storekeeper, a police officer in Salt Lake City and another stint as a ranch hand in Idaho. In 1911 he made his breakthrough into the literary world when he began to write for a pulp magazine. At the time, he was 35 and working as a pencil sharpener salesman. His first professional sale was ''Under the Moons of Mars'', serialized in 1912 in [[The All-Story Magazine]]. he took up writing full-time and by the time the serialisation of his first book was complete, had completed two further novels, one of which was ''Tarzan of the Apes''.

Despite the lack of critical acclaim, ''Tarzan'' was a cultural phenomenon when it first appeared and Burroughs was determined to take full advantage of the public's interest. In 1913 Burroughs founded his own publishing house Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises and Burroughs-Tarzan Pictures were later founded in 1934.

In addition to his four major adventure series (Tarzan, Barsoom, Pellucidar and Venus), he wrote several other adventure novels between 1912 and 1933, including ''The Cave Girl'' in 1925, two Western novels about a white Apache; ''The War Chief'' in 1927 and ''Apache Devil'' in 1933. In these, he showed sympathy for Native Americans, and in ''Beyond The Farthest Star'' (published posthumously in 1964), he wrote about the brutality of war. 

Burroughs purchased a large ranch in the [[San Fernando Valley]], in 1919, which was later developed into the suburb of Tarzana. In 1933, he was elected mayor of California Beach and married his second wife, Florence Dearholt, in 1935 (they divorced in 1942). 

Burroughs was living in [[Hawaii]] at the time of the Japanese attack on [[Attack on Pearl Harbor|Pearl Harbour]]. Despite his advanced age - he was 66 at the time - he applied for and was granted permission to serve as a war correspondent, becoming the oldest U.S. correspondent. After the war, he returned to [[Encino]], [[California]] where he died of a heart attack on 19 March 1950.