How Edgar Rice Burroughs Creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars Became a Writer

 

If you aspire to greatness in the field of writing books, comics, etc, etc then you’ll probably find the story of how Edgar Rice Burroughs got into writing both interesting  and motivational. Burroughs created Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. The King of the Jungle has been made into  a multitude of movies and tv series over the years and John Carter of Mars has been said to have been the precursor to modern sci-fi entertainment without which we may not have had  such things as Star Wars today.

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I actually came across this story a few years ago in DC Comics Tarzan #230 published in 1975. Within was a reprinted article from the Washington Post from 1929. It was an interview with Edgar Ric Burroughs where he describes his journey into writing.

His motivation for writing was not really for a love of creating grand adventure stories and science fiction, but for more down to earth reasons. He simply needed the money to support his family.

Like a lot of great men who found success throughout the ages, he didn’t start out greatly successful. In fact he said in the interview he wasn’t really successful at anything until he began writing. In his own words, “I was 35 and had failed in every enterprise I had ever attempted.”

He said he had been dropped from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, flunked examinations for West Point and was discharged from the regular army due to a weak heart. He started a stationary store that didn’t last long. When he got married in 1900 he was making 15 dollars a week working for his father in a storage battery business. In the interview he listed a long list of job and business failures.

He goes on to say, “I am convinced that what are commonly known as ‘the breaks’ good or bad, have fully as much to do with one’s success or failure as ability he said in regard to one job he got as accountant that he knew nothing about because the boss knew even less about accounting than he did.

He describes his financial situation  as he went job to job as living in poverty.

Finally, he decided upon writing his first story. He thought to himself that he could write science fiction just as good as what he had read in the science fiction magazines. He had never written a story before, but he knew he could write better stories than what was being published in magazines at that time.

In the article, he goes on to say that he knew nothing of the technique of story writing. He went on to say that even after 18 years of writing and 31 books at the time, he still hadn’t figured out that technique.

When he first started his writing career he submitted half a novel to a Thomas Newell Metcalf who was editor of the All-Story Magazine. The editor wrote him back and said he liked the first half of the story and if the last half was as good he’d use it.

What I find interesting is how Burroughs describes his situation at the time, he said if the editor hadn’t gave him that little bit of encouragement he would have never finished the novel and never had a writing career. 

Because he wasn’t writing because of any urge to write, nor for any particular love of writing. After finishing the novel, he was given $400 dollars which included all serial rights. His first story was titled “Deja Thoris, Princess of Mars”. Metcalf changed it to “Under the Moon of Mars”. With that success he decided to begin a career in writing. Still, he had to work days and write evenings while he wrote “Tarzan of the Apes” that he sold for $700 dollars. Next came “The Gods of Mars” which he sold for $1000 dollars in 1913 to the same magazine. At that point he decided to devote himself to writing, but it would be a few years before his stories would go from magazines to books.

It wasn’t until the editor of the New York Evening World decided to run Tarzan stories as a newspaper serial that Burroughs got his first book. The newspaper serial caused other newspapers to run with the Tarzan serials which led to readers demanding it be printed in book form.

Thanks to economic pressures on one man and a multitude of failed jobs and businesses we now have not only Tarzan, but most likely every great sci-fi adventure we now take for granted may not have existed or might have looked completely different thanks to Burroughs John Carter of Mars.

Take the one example. John Carter had increased strength and was able to leap great distances on Mars thanks to the lesser gravity. That’s exactly what was said of Superman on Earth.

Carter paved the way for Flash Gordon, and George Lucas himself credited the creation of Star Wars to Flash Gordon the descendant of John Carter so to speak.