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A princess of where? Burroughs's imaginary lack of place.(Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars)(Critical essay)

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From: West Virginia University Philological Papers
Date: 20060922
Author:Mein, Eric

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars in 1911, and All-Story Magazine published it as a pulp serial in 1912. The novel tells the story of John Carter's journey to the fourth planet, which the natives call Barsoom. At the time of the novel's publication, manned space flight was an improbable dream, and the planets were the same faceless worlds they had been since the discoveries of Galileo. Burroughs could write, without irony or quaintness, of a universe in which "nearly every planet and star having atmospheric conditions at all approaching those of Barsoom, shows forms ...