Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) was an American writer born in Chicago who failed at the army, gold mining, railroad policing and pencil-sharpener sales before, at thirty-five, writing a story for the pulp magazines because he thought he could do no worse than what he was reading. A Princess of Mars (1912) began the Barsoom series; Tarzan of the Apes, published the same year, made him one of the best-selling authors of the century and gave his name to the California suburb of Tarzana, built on his ranch. He wrote nearly eighty books, and in his late sixties served as the oldest American war correspondent in the Pacific.