In January 1900 he married Emma Hulbert with whom he had three children: Joan, Hulbert and John Coleman. Joan Burroughs married Tarzan actor James Pierce. From 1932-1936 they were the voices of Tarzan and Jane on national radio show Tarzan. They remained married until Joan's death in 1972. Both are buried in Shelbyville, IN and their tombstones bear the inscriptions Tarzan and Jane.
Burroughs divorced Emma in 1934 and married actress Florence Gilbert Dearholt the following year. They divorced in 1942 and died in Encino, CA on 19, Mar 1950.
Aiming his work at the pulps. Burroughs wrote popular science fiction and fantasy stories involving Earth adventurers who were transported to lost islands, the earth's hollow interior (in his Pellucidar stories) and various planets — notably Barsoom (Burroughs's fictional name for Mars) and Amtor (his fictional name for Venus). Much of his work was published in the Argosy and All Story magazines.
Burroughs first story, Under the Moons of Mars, was serialized by Frank Munsey in the February-July 1912 issues of The All-Story. It was written under the name Norman Bean to protect his reputation. It inaugurated the Barsoom series. A Princess of Mars was published as a book by A.C. McClurg of Chicago in 1917.
Tarzan was a cultural sensation when introduced and Burroughs was determined to capitalize on Tarzan's popularity in every way possible. He planned to exploit Tarzan through several different media including a syndicated Tarzan comic strip, movies and merchandise. Experts in the field advised against this course of action, stating that the different media would just end up competing against each other. Burroughs went ahead, however, and proved the experts wrong — the public wanted Tarzan in whatever fashion he was offered. Tarzan remains one of the most successful fictional characters to this day and is a cultural icon.
In either 1915 or 1919, Burroughs purchased a large ranch north of Los Angeles, California, which he named "Tarzana." The citizens of the community that sprang up around the ranch voted to adopt that name when Tarzana, California was formed in 1927. Also, the unincorporated community of Tarzan, Texas, was formally named in 1927 when the U.S. Postal Service accepted the name, reputedly coming from the popularity of an early Tarzan comic strip and the silent film Tarzan of the Apes (1918), starring Elmo Lincoln.
