Pushing the Envelope No.
244
A Century of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
One of the directions Edgar Rice Burroughs envisioned
for his life was to be a military man. And he had ample background for
it, having graduated from the Michigan Military Academy and then serving
in the 7th Cavalry, pursuing renegades in Arizona.
But illness, as we know, cut short his military career,
although he continued to have an active interest in the armed services
the rest of his life.
His father had been a major in the Union Army during the
Civil War, so he certainly had a family background to stir his yearnings
at an early age.
He did try, unsuccessfully, to enroll at West Point and
also tried, later, to join up with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.
He served as an officer in the Illinois Militia during
World War I and he happened to be living in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, and
watched the attack on Pearl Harbor through binoculars. He was in his late
60s by then and too old to serve in an active duty status but tried to
help the war effort by serving in the Businessmen's Military Training Corps,
a civilian group organized to help defend the islands in the event of a
Japanese landing and invasion. But that didn't satisfy his desire to be
where the action was, so he was able to get certification as a reporter
and served as the oldest war correspondent in the Pacific Theatre, traveling
about in tactical zones on Navy ships and Army planes.
His only other real experience in uniform was as a railroad
policeman in Utah for a short time, one of many jobs he had tried earlier
in life to support his young family.
From an early age, Burroughs had enjoyed drawing cartoons
and writing fantasy stories to entertain family members. But he probably
never actually considered becoming a professional writer until 1911 when
he was managing a business that sold pencil sharpeners. While his crew
of salesmen were out on the streets knocking on doors, Burroughs sat in
the office and amused himself by reading adventure stories in pulp magazines,
one of the major entertainments of the day. It is famously reported that
he thought that if people could get paid for writing such rotten stories
that he could write stories just as rotten.
So he began writing what he believed was a ridiculous
story about a Civil War veteran, John Carter, who was mysteriously transported
to the planet Mars where there were tall green men, multi-limbed beasts
and, fortunately, people quite a bit like himself, including a beautiful
princess who needed constant rescuing.
The story, "Under the Moons of Mars," was snapped
up by The All-Story magazine and serialized in early 1912. He was
paid $400 but, though he had little experience in such things, he was smart
enough to sell only the first-publication rights to his "rotten story."
Enthused by the big money he had been paid, he wrote a
second story, "The Outlaw of Torn," about adventure in Medieval
England. It didn't sell as easily so he wrote a third story, "Tarzan
of the Apes," for which he was paid $700 by All-Story. Things
were looking up!
Burroughs continued to dream up fantastic stories and
write and sell them. His stories were enthusiastically read by his new
fans and thus eagerly sought by magazine and book publishers. Even "The
Outlaw of Torn" finally got into print.
He continued to write Tarzan and Mars stories and invented
an inner world, populated with people and dinosaurs, for yet more adventure
sagas, and took his readers to the moon, Venus and to exotic islands where
other pulse-pounding adventures awaited his heroes and heroines. He also
wrote four westerns -- two traditional cowboy stories and two historical
novels telling stories from the Native American perspective.
And because he was smart enough to maintain control of
his intellectual properties by selling only first-publication rights, he
was able to more than double his money on each new story by selling them
first to magazines and then later to book publishers, and was able to sell
his characters -- most notably Tarzan -- to movie makers.
And while other authors were making names for themselves
in the usual ways, Burroughs had an idea to do something none of them had
thought of: He incorporated himself.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.,
was created on March 26, 1923, and the company he founded recently celebrated
the 100th anniversary of that landmark event.
ERB Inc., located on Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana,
Calif., the Los Angeles area community which took its name from Burroughs's
most famous character, is set back from the main drag and its presence
partially obscured by trees and bushes. Even with the street address, some
seekers have had difficulty finding it.
But its small but busy staff today continues to publish
his books under the ERB Inc. imprint, another innovation Burroughs
came up with later in his career, when he eliminated the middle man by
no longer offering his novels to existing book companies, publishing his
books himself. The first of these was "Tarzan the Invincible,"
which came out in 1931. These were finer editions, with mostly sturdy blue-pebbled
binding and a uniform format.
ERB Inc. has also opened the door to new stories about
the characters and settings ERB created, and has published them in two
series: The Wild Adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Edgar
Rice Burroughs Universe.
The company held an open house at its office on April
7, to celebrate the anniversary and has promised "more exciting announcements
throughout the year."
As my fan contribution to the legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs,
I created this commemorative postal cover and arranged with the USPS to
have my covers canceled with a Tarzana, Calif., postmark on Sunday, March
26, the 100th anniversary. I used the Edgar Rice Burroughs Forever stamp
which was issued in 2012.
The cover shows a photo of Burroughs in his younger days,
during the prime of his writing activity, and displays the covers of three
of his books that were published in 1923.
Two days before Edgar Rice Burroughs set up his corporation,
his ninth Tarzan novel, "Tarzan and the Golden Lion," was published.
A few months later, on August 10, 1923, "The Girl
from Hollywood" was published as the last Burroughs novel to be
copyrighted by him alone. The first book to have the "Inc." added to his
copyright name was "Pellucidar," a novel about the inner
world he created, which came out on Sept. 5, 1923.
"The Girl from Hollywood" was a contemporary
novel which had no wild monsters for heroes to conquer, but rather the
monster of drug addiction which a young starlet had to overcome with her
own resolve. Burroughs used the setting of his own Tarzana ranch and the
lifestyle of his own family as a backdrop for "The Girl from Hollywood."
March 26 is also the publication date for "Llana of
Gathol," the last book to be published in Burroughs's lifetime and,
at the time, the last volume in Burroughs's 10-book Martian series. "Llana"
was published in 1948 and Burroughs died March 19, 1950, at the age of
74 and a half.
But Burroughs left several unpublished manuscripts behind
and just over 10 years after his death, in the early 1960s, most of those
stories began to see print, including two more Mars short stories, two
Tarzan novels, an historical novel taking place during the reign of Roman
emperor Caligula, and several other stories.
...
Note: A slightly edited version of the above
account was printed and included inside each of the 100th anniversary postal
covers I made.
