Description:

Burroughs Edgar

Tarzan Author Edgar Rice Burroughs Admits That "my boyhood idols appear rather silly to me now"

 

Typed Letter Signed "Edgar Rice Burroughs," on his corporate letterhead, one page, 8.5" x 11", Tarzana, California, October 14, 1936, to Walter Popek of Garfield, New Jersey. Light folds, else fine condition.

 

Burroughs writes to an autograph collector apologizing that he has "no suitable photograph to autograph for your collection. I am, however autographing the card enclosed with your letter [not present], and am returning it herewith." Burroughs adds, "It is rather difficult to answer your last paragraph as, of course, my boyhood idols appear rather silly to me now, and none of my ambitions was along the writing line."

 

Burroughs had started life in the military, but failing the entrance exam for West Point, he ended up as an enlisted soldier in the 7th Cavarly stationed in Arizona. After being diagnosed with a heart problem, he was judged ineligible for military service and discharged in 1897. After a string of odd jobs without much direction, Burroughs began writing pulp fiction. After he made nearly $400 (roughly $8,800 today) from his selling his first story, "Under the Moons from Mars" in 1912, he soon quit his day job and began writing full-time. He remarked in 1929: "...if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, [then] I could write stories just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines."

 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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