A
second son and third child of the Burroughses, John Coleman, was born in
1913, and the following year saw a birth of a different sort: Tarzan
of the Apes was published as a book. This novel is still in print today.
The first Tarzan movie appeared in 1918, with Elmo Lincoln in the title
role, which only helped to make Tarzan and Burroughs even more popular.
Eventually Burroughs would put out a total of 26 Tarzan books, and left
a fragment of another that was only discovered long after his death. Most
of Burroughs' other stories would also appear in book form, and are available
in libraries and bookstores worldwide.
By 1916 Burroughs felt that
he had earned a vacation, and so he packed up Emma and the children (and
their dog Tarzan) and set out on a cross-country camping trip. At this
time there was no such thing as an interstate highway system ~ actually,
there were very few roads at all. Heading out with a touring car, a truck
and a trailer the party set off for Maine but eventually wound up in Southern
California. Eventually the expedition made the return trip to Chicago,
but the California bug had bitten Burroughs. In 1919, thanks to the success
of Tarzan, Burroughs was able to purchase a large ranch north of Los Angeles.
He named it Tarzana.
As the Lord of Tarzana, Burroughs had seemingly found the good life. Tarzan
had provided him with a comfortable living, his books were selling worldwide
(even in the Soviet Union, where such tales were not well regarded by the
Communist government), and the nearby community of Hollywood was busy cranking
out Tarzan movies. (Tinsel Town even provided Burroughs with a son-in-law:
Jim Pierce, who starred in "Tarzan and the Golden Lion," married Joan Burroughs
in 1928.) The ultimate compliment was paid by the citizens of the community
that had sprung up around the Tarzana ranch: they voted to adopt the name
"Tarzana" when their town was incorporated in 1928.
Burroughs liked to think
of himself as a hard-headed businessman and concluded that he could make
an even better living if he founded his own company. And so in 1923 Burroughs
became an employee of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. This was an unusual step
for an author to take, although it is now quite common. Burroughs would
even start publishing his own books, beginning in 1931 with Tarzan the
Invincible. The last book to appear under the Edgar Rice Burroughs,
Inc. imprint was I Am a Barbarian in 1967.
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