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Edgar Rice "Ned" Burroughs (September 1, 1875 – March 19, 1950) was an American author of numerous pulp fiction heroic adventures. The most famous are Tarzan, set in Darkest Africa, and John Carter of Mars, but other lands are used: jungles and islands throughout the world, Venus in the Amtor series, and the hollow center of the earth Pellucidar, one of several literary examples of the Hollow World.

Trope Maker for many aspects of Planetary Romance. An influence on Sword and Sorcery, despite the SF veneer to all the marvels. Lots of books here.

He is the great-grand-uncle of filmmaker Wes Anderson.

Most definitely not to be confused with William S. Burroughs.note 

Works by Edgar Rice Burroughs with their own trope pages include:


Tropes featured in his other works:

  • Action Girl: His heroines never lack pluck, and while not the fighter the hero is, they often can weigh in on a fray.
  • All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: Averted in The Eternal Lover (aka The Eternal Savage); Nu and his people live in caves, but they appear to be modern humans.
  • Birthmark of Destiny: In The Outlaw of Torn, Norman of Torn has a lily-shaped birthmark on his right breast, which eventually proves that he's Prince Richard, lost heir to Henry The Third.
  • Blue Blood: Constantly. A hero, or heroine, not of Royal Blood is at least this.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: All over the place.
  • Canon Welding:
  • Contemporary Caveman:
    • The novel The Eternal Lover (a.k.a. The Eternal Savage and Sweetheart Primeval). A cliff-dwelling warrior of 100,000 years ago, Nu, is magically transported to the present, falls in love with Victoria Custer of Beatrice, Nebraska, the reincarnation of his lost lover Nat-ul, and the two are transported back to the Stone Age.
    • The short story "The Resurrection of Jimber Jaw" features an unfrozen caveman with politically incorrect views.
  • Contrived Coincidence: His plots are stuffed with them.
  • Culture Clash: An ingredient of a big percentage of Burroughs' books, especially in the Lost World and Planetary Romance stories.
  • Dirty Coward: More than one of his villains.
  • Disney Owns This Trope: He was one of the first authors to incorporate, which is why the name "Tarzan" and "John Carter" are still trademarked even though most of the books are now in the public domain.
  • Frazetta Man: Burroughs' books are full of these guys. Appropriately, Frank Frazetta himself did a lot of his covers.
  • Loincloth: The official dress code in many a Burroughs novel.
  • Love at First Sight: Common method of choosing a mate for a Burroughs hero.
  • Love Hurts: Common result of choosing a mate for a Burroughs hero.
  • Oblivious to Love: Your typical Edgar Rice Burroughs hero needs to be hit over the head with a club, several times, before he realizes that he has fallen in love with the heroine.
  • Oh Wait, This Is My Grocery List: Happens to the Prime Minister in Minidoka: 937th Earl of One Mile Series M.
  • Rags to Royalty: The title character of The Cave Girl was a ship-wrecked child of Spanish nobility.
  • Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: The Prime Minister in Minidoka: 937th Earl of One Mile Series M.
  • Royal Brat: The Leper King Lodivarman in The Land of Hidden Men.
  • The Social Darwinist: In both the Tarzan series and his lesser-known sci fi Venus series Burroughs depicted what we might call "eugenics utopias", societies that strictly regulated heredity. This ranged from rewarding "fit" births, forced sterilization and even killing people deemed unfit. In the Tarzan example, this has gone on for over 2,000 years, with the result that no crime exists. Burroughs firmly believed that all criminal behavior was caused by hereditary traits, and strongly supported eugenics, writing a nonfiction essay called "I See A New Race" which made clear this reflected his own views.
  • Strictly Formula: Burroughs stuck, most of the time, to a formula plot. His occasional departures were often less successful.
  • Whip Sword: The spear-whips in Minidoka: 937th Earl of One Mile Series M.

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