Edgar Rice Burroughs was 35 when he sold his first story, "Dejah Thoris, Princess of Mars," to a pulp fiction periodical called All-Story Magazine. It was his sophomore effort, published in 1912, however, that not only put him on the map as a writer, but also introduced to the world a character who would go on to star in more than 43 movie adaptations, hundreds of radio shows, a longrunning comic strip, comic books and 26 Burroughs novels.
The story, of course, was Tarzan of the Apes, the tale of an infant lost in the African jungles who is adopted by a family of apes and raised as one of their own. Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes in longhand on the backs of old letterhead and "odd pieces of paper," having little faith in the story when he submitted it for consideration. Yet it not only sold for a princely $700, it also captured the public's imagination in a manner that few literary properties have before or since. […]
