Talk:Edgar Rice Burroughs

message: The books need dates of publication. I started, but didn't have time to finish. It'd also be nice to have a more extensive biography and a photo, but I guess I should do the work on this instead of just asking for it. :-S —Frecklefoot 14:07, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Dates

message: Why was the link:
A brief biography and works of Burroughs
removed? I thought it was pretty good. —Frecklefoot 16:58, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Reason for link removal

message: Do we have a source for this claim?
"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." 2601:40C:201:1778:48B7:D3D6:DAD1:96EF (talk) 21:26, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Experts warned against licensing Tarzan. 

message: ERB would have considered himself a progressive due his embrace of science and scientific principles for the "improvement" of society and humanity.  It's important to understand this even though his views were incredibly reactionary, conservative and based on a pretty clearly race and traditional social class hierarchical world view.  He would have been a proto-fascist kind of progressive at a time when the conflicting kind of progressivism was more thoroughly egalitarian and socialist, and then, like now, largely rejected by the mainstream establishment as "dangerous" economic Marxists although they were usually called "Anarchists" to frighten people in the late 19th and early 20th century.  Then, like now, the issue of economic power (who had it, who didn't, and how they got it and kept it) was typically suppressed in the thinking and discussion of social policy.   Nevertheless, Burroughs would have thought of himself as on the side of "progress", even though he identified the "genetic superiority" of the tradtional British Aristocracy as the basis for power and social progress.
This is one of the most important non-literary secondary subjects to consider in the article about ERB and his work. 
This is why I've added several requests for citations to claims about these subjects in the article Introduction and the Article Body itself.
Editors could vastly improve the article by adding title and page numbers, etc. to published versions of ERB's work to back up such claims about ERB's depiction of such ideas as Eugenics and Scientific Racism in his fiction and non-fiction made in the Article here.
Also, much better work needs to be done referring to secondary source material.  There is very very little secondary literature listed here.  I've only found one "scholarly" article (not written by a historian or a specialist in literature) referenced in the Article, and it's only available through WAYBACK MACHINE.  Other secondary sources seem to be mostly popular biographies of ERB, but no page references to even these sources are made to direct users of the Article to any discussion about ERB's views on Eugenics and Scientific Racism and the British Class System or … anything that would support the claims made here in the Article about ERB's views on these very important subjects.
It's clearly very very important when reading any of ERB's work to understand the underlying reactionary hierarchical conservative world view he is promoting with Tarzan, and John Carter, and all that seemingly innocent "adventure" stories we usually take it all to be.  The work is better understood and enjoyed only by having a clear understanding of the nature of the "progressive" message ERB was promoting at the time, and how his views might compare to our own today.
Thanks! J.A.I. (8T8) (talk) 22:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't disagree that further sources and additional perspectives are desireable here, and additions would be welcome. However, that does not mean that the current material is unsourced; in fact, it is referenced to a high-quality source (an academic journal). That the full text of that journal article is most easily accessed via an archive link has no bearing on the matter (it's not as if the publication has disappeared from the web - see ). I have therefore removed all the "citation needed" templates, as these are for unsourced claims, of which there are none. Feel free to expand sourcing and coverage. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 08:19, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  References to Tarzan & ERB “Eugenics” and “Scientific Racism”