Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875 - March 19, 1950) has obtained lasting fame for his works about the jungle hero Tarzan, and also for the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, but he was a volumius writer who also wrote in many other genres as well. Burroughs famously got started out of disdain for others' writings, ting, .. .if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, that 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. Just before he wrote the Tarzan works that made him famous, he wrote The Outlaw of Torn, a historical vel that takes place in medieval England and features a young outlaw named Norman of Torn.