EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS (1875-1950)
Edgar Rice Burroughs is renowned for his many novels of fantastic adventure. Unquestionably his best known creation is that of the jungle hero, Tarzan the Ape Man, but almost as well known are his stories of other planets and of Pellucidar beneath the Earth's crust.
Born in Chicago in 1875, he tried his hand at many businesses without notable success, until at the age of thirty-five, he turned to writing. With the publication of Tarzan of the Apes and A Princess of Mars, his career was assured. The gratitude of a multitude of readers who found in his imagination exactly the kind of escape reading they loved assured him of a well-earned fortune.
By the time of his death, in 1950, at his home in a town bearing the name of his brain child, Tarzana, California, his name was a byword in literature. Over 40,000,000 copies of his books have appeared in 58 different languages.