Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was an American writer who failed at a series of businesses before selling his first story to a pulp magazine at thirty-six. Tarzan of the Apes (1912) and the Barsoom novels made him one of the most commercially successful authors of his era, and he incorporated himself to control the licensing. He was among the oldest accredited war correspondents of the Pacific theatre in the Second World War.