Edgar Rice Burroughs
John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, Pellucidar — the pulp foundations American fantasy and adventure are built on.
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes (1912), A Princess of Mars (1912), and dozens of other novels across multiple series — the Barsoom (John Carter of Mars) novels, the Tarzan series, the Pellucidar inner-Earth series, the Caspak (Land That Time Forgot) novels. His influence on American adventure fantasy and pulp science-fantasy is foundational; writers from Robert E. Howard forward have built on what he established. The prose is propulsive and the adventures move.
For adult readers interested in the genre's pulp foundations. Content reflects its period — early-twentieth-century racial, gender, and colonial attitudes appear throughout, and modern readers approach this work with that awareness. Violence is action-pulp-pitched; sexual content stays period-appropriate (which is to say nearly absent). The reading experience is reading the source material that shaped a century of adventure fantasy. Pick this shelf when you want the genre's pulp roots, with all the period weight that entails.
- Foundational American pulp
- John Carter and Tarzan originals
- Influence on a century of writers
- Adventure with relentless pace
