In the Winter 2021 issue of Cirsova Magazine, renowned author Michael Tierney wrote a very interesting article about Edgar Rice Burroughs and his relationship with Bob Evans, the editor of All-Story magazine who helped him develop his career as a writer.

Like so many of us I am a huge ERB fan. I was never much of a Tarzan fan, though that has changed as I have got older. However John Carter and Carson Napier were my heroes. There’s the famous Robert Heinlein long quote from his superb Glory Road, which starts, “What did I want? I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom…” That was what I wanted from my long-ago teenage years till now. I want the hurtling moons of Barsoom even now. Heinlein’s full quote is a paean to pulp fiction and pulp writers, and is worth looking up if you don’t know it.

More recently I have been reading the stories authorized by the ERB estate (Swords Against the Moon Men and others). But Michael Tierney’s Cirsova Magazine article made me realize how little I knew of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ life. There’s the potted one-line biography that appears everywhere. That ERB was broke, sat down and wrote A Princess of Mars in one mighty effort. That Tarzan followed and so did wealth and fame.

The first problem was finding a decent biography of ERB. There are many “biographies” which turn out to be 12 page Ebook summaries of ERB’s life and achievements. I reached out to my Twitter mutuals and they came back with two books: Irwin Porges’ mammoth 800 page Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan, and John Taliaferro’s Tarzan Forever: The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Porges’ book was published in 1975, Taliaferro’s in 2002. I chose Taliaferro’s Tarzan Forever.

Early days
ERB was born in Chicago in 1875 to George Burroughs, a Civil War veteran who went on to run a successful furniture business. Edgar was the youngest of five sons, a happy, lively kid. Taliaferro’s book is good on ERB’s early life, particularly on his time at Michigan Military Academy from age 16. It was here that Edgar got his taste for all things military. In 1895 he enlisted in the US 7th Cavalry and was posted to Fort Grant, Arizona. He was determined to become an officer. Here he improved his already excellent horsemanship, chasing renegade Apaches. Though he didn’t know it, his exploration and experiences of the Arizona Territory was going to provide excellent material for his Western novels in years to come.

Taliaferro spends almost a chapter describing ERB’s grim and difficult life at Fort Grant. It was considered one of the worst postings a cavalryman could get. ERB got dysentery and several other illnesses and became too sick to serve on active duty. A military doctor diagnosed a heart murmur and told him he had “Probably only six months to live.”

ERB had to request a discharge. However once away from the diseased confines of Fort Grant, his health improved so much that he took work as a cowboy. He loved riding and testing himself against the elements. The masculine virtues so prized amongst cowboys were to be remade in the form of the noblest savage, Tarzan.

His military service summed up a recurring theme in his early life. A good man who had bad luck. After the military he entered into several businesses with his brothers, who he admired tremendously. But none of them went well for him. He was “the little brother who didn’t amount to much.” Partly it was his mercurial nature. Though a hard worker, he tended towards the new and untried. And though he had more than his share of bad luck in what was a particularly turbulent time of US history, he always took it on the chin and kept going—a trait of his that was going to show up both in John Carter and Tarzan. The struggle against adversity was a keynote, especially in the Mars stories. Taliaferro keeps the early life section short but highlights those experiences which would later fuel ERB’s writing.

This section ends with the bit we all know. By 1911 ERB was in trouble. Thirty-six, married with two children, he was working at his brother’s stationery company and could barely pay his bills.

Writing to freedom
Like many Americans, ERB had read the pulps, especially the bestselling mags like Argosy. Taliaferro estimates that, at that time, one in three Americans read them. Taliaferro is very good on this popular history, putting ERB in context. He provides a rich descriptive history of the pulps, and follows that with the story of how ERB wrote A Princess of Mars and offered it to the Munsey pulps. This leads into one of the best sections of the book, where Taliaferro talks in detail about A Princess of Mars, its acceptance and what made it so successful. This section has a depth and historical accuracy that is enthralling. There’s some very perceptive literary analysis of ERB’s pioneering melding of historical archetypes (the “Beautiful Princess”) and speculative science fantasy.

A Princess of Mars was serialized in All-Story magazine from February to July 1912. It became a smash hit with All-Story’s readers. In June 1912 ERB finished the first draft of the story that was going to conquer pulp fiction, the movies, the comics, and a host of other media. Tarzan of the Apes was bought by All-Story, who showered ERB with praise (and some much-needed money). Taliaferro goes into considerable detail on ERB’s literary and scientific influences (especially Victorian anthropology), and how they shaped the story of Tarzan .He paints ERB as a man of perceptive imagination, with a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity.

Keeping the momentum
Still strapped for cash and with a third child on the way, ERB wrote his third classic adventure, Pellucidar. Taliaferro summarizes the Lost World literature that recently been in vogue and makes a reasonable argument for the books and scientific hypotheses that ERB was influenced by during this period. For pulp enthusiasts this is good stuff, showing the literary linkages and concepts that helped birthed pulp SF.

Then we get the marvelous story of ERB’s meeting and relationship with Bob Evans, the editor who would do the most to foster ERB’s talent and reputation. This section leads into ERB’s attempts to get published in “the slicks” as the more upmarket magazine were known.

Then in 1917, with WWI raging in Europe, ERB tried to join up. Writing about his commission as a captain in the Illinois Reserve Militia, Taliaferro reaches back into historical accounts that show ERB was a diligent, conscientious officer. ERB also became a propagandist for the war effort, writing essays and articles for magazines and newspapers.

The 1920s: Tarzan everywhere
The Twenties were a great time for ERB. His work was in demand, he wrote some of the books that are amongst my favorites, including The War Chief, his best-selling venture into the Western market. He’d sold the movie rights for several Tarzan stories and was now comfortably well-off. Tarzan Forever devotes several chapters to this period and ERB’s attempts to control the portrayal of Tarzan onscreen become a story in and of itself.

At this point in ERB’s life, he was the creator of some of the most original concepts in fiction. The book explores ERB’s evolution as businessman and how he began to protect his rights to his marvelous creations. His incorporation of his books and characters, trademarking them across all kind of media, is discussed in detail. Taliaferro recounts how rapacious and deceitful movie producers were a spur to ERB’s increasing legally protected works. Meanwhile ERB bought the large California estate he named Tarzana and we get to see another side of Mr. Burroughs, the gentleman farmer.

The 1930s: Prolific and Successful, at a price
In the Thirties Tarzan of the Apes with Johnny Weismuller as the Apeman became the most successful Tarzan movie to date. The Tarzan comic strip was now going from strength to strength and ERB created his wonderful SF fantasy Lost on Venus, a story of an Earthman, Carson Napier, lost on the steamy jungle planet of Venus. Napier was very much in the John Carter mold and allowed ERB to give his extravagant imagination full rein.

Older stories, rejected back in his early days as a struggling writer, were being sold and ERB was now a very successful author. But of necessity, Taliaferro delves deeply into ERB’s family life during this period. ERB’s marriage was falling apart. Throughout the book, Taliaferro is at pains to show what a good father ERB was to his children. What came now was his wife’s descent into alcoholism. The book shows us the health freak, weightlifter ERB struggling to deal with a sickness he was constitutionally unable to understand. But ERB was also under strain from other directions..

Some of that strain ERB very much enjoyed. Taliaferro devotes a good chunk of his book to ERB’s adventures in the movie business and a very entertaining chunk it is too. ERB is shown in the role he relished, as a businessman. Taliaferro portrays the Thirties movie business as a house of cards, prone to collapse at any moment. Included here are some wonderful excerpts of ERB’s letters, witty and acid commentaries on the failings, physical and mental, of the movie folk who crossed his path.

His empire had become enormous but it all depended on him. Now he had John Carter, Tarzan, Pellucidar, the Venus stories and several other fictional properties. It was a massive amount of work to write for all of these. Though he kept increasing his output, the quality of his work began to suffer. Editors became increasingly combative, as he reused plot devices and characters from earlier novels. In addition, he was involved in several other business ventures. Towards the end of the Thirties he had several episodes of burnout and depression. Taliaferro illustrates this with excerpts from ERB’s correspondence with various book and magazine editors. Bob Evans was long gone and often it was only ERB’s celebrity and name recognition that pushed some of the later Tarzan novels over the finish line into publication.

World War II. Byline: Edgar Rice Burroughs
ERB was living in Hawaii in November 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He immediately enlisted in the local civilian guard and was sent to guard factories vulnerable to a Japanese attack. However Hawaii’s US military commander realized he would be far more valuable in another role. He commissioned ERB to write a weekly column to be printed in the Hawaii newspapers. Its intent was to lift the morale of the Hawaiian citizens, who, anxious and afraid, awaited a Japanese invasion. By all accounts, ERB’s columns were great morale boosters.

Desperately wanting to serve his country, too old to fight (he was 66) he became a reporter, a war correspondent. He self-effacingly wrote one of his sons that “I’m the oldest reporter in this theatre of war”. But as Taliaferro recounts, it all went brilliantly. Utterly committed to his country, ERB’s reporting was superb, human and deeply personal. And wherever he went, he was adored by the ordinary soldiers, the American troops. The “guy who wrote Tarzan, who made the big bucks” was putting himself on the line for America and freedom and it meant a great deal to them. His reporting visits were great morale boosters and Taliaferro again draws on ERB’s own letters to illustrate his wartime fame.

The war ends
In 1945 ERB was invalided out of his reporting role. He had had a major heart attack and was ill and very weak. Back in California, he was obliged to live as a semi-invalid. Taliaferro gives us a considered and careful account of ERB’s retirement. Though ERB had had some financial reverses, he was still comfortably well off. He spent his time managing his intellectual properties, enjoying visits from his family. He wrote a little, though most of it was never completed and did not see the light of day. In 1950, another major heart attack claimed him and he died sitting in his favorite chair.

Taliaferro
Taliaferro’s biography of ERB is a solid, well-informed and detailed work. I thought his book was best when placing ERB in his various environments. His writing for the pulps, his wily haggling over rates, his ability to spin vast, detailed, fantastic worlds out of a tiny amount of speculative astronomy and anthropology. He’s even better (and very entertaining) on ERB working with the fools and charlatans of Hollywood, trying to get the spirit and soul of Tarzan onscreen, regardless of stupid directors and even stupider actors.

I never felt that Taliaferro was in love with ERB’s work. He analyses and praises ERB’s construction of a fantastic Mars, and an African jungle too wild and fanciful to exist. But he doesn’t thrill to John Carter slaying Tharks, or Tarzan racing through the jungle to rescue Jane. He’s pretty much left that to another writer. But he has given us the living, breathing Edgar Rice Burroughs and shown us what a wonderful writer he was. He places ERB in his time and makes no bones about ERB’s beliefs, some of which Western society now find unacceptable. Still, he shows ERB as a courageous and admirable man, a patriot and a family man. There’s a corollary here. Tarzan Forever is also a good book for anyone who wants to understand the pulps and how they produced the finest American stories.

Tarzan Forever succeeds in what it sets out to do. It gives us a full and panoramic picture of the man who revolutionized American fiction. I would recommend it as a lucid, comprehensive history of a great American writer.

John Gradoville writes SFF, crime and horror. His Lost World story “The Gold of Palladias” will be published in the winter 2022 issue of Cirsova Magazine (Dec 2022). His Western Horror story “The Alchemist of Souls” will be published in A Fistful of Demons (Oct 2022), an anthology of stories set in the best-selling Weird Western world of The Widow’s Son.