A Princess of Mars was first published as “Under the Moons of Mars” (under the pseudonym Norman Bean) in The All-Story from February to July 1912, then in book form by A.C. McClurg & Co. in 1917. It was Burroughs’s first published work of fiction — written before Tarzan of the Apes, though the Tarzan novel was published in magazine form first.
The story follows John Carter, a Confederate veteran prospecting in Arizona, who is mysteriously transported to Mars — called Barsoom by its inhabitants. The lower gravity gives Carter superhuman strength and leaping ability. He encounters the green Martians (tall, four-armed, fierce Tharks), the red Martians (humanoid, civilized, beautiful), and eventually the incomparable Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, with whom he falls in love and whose people he must save from destruction.
Burroughs’s Mars bears no relationship to scientific reality — it is a fantasy world of sword-fighting, airships, and dying civilizations that owes more to the adventure romances of H. Rider Haggard than to any astronomical knowledge. But the vividness of Burroughs’s imagination, the pace of his storytelling, and the wish-fulfillment appeal of his hero (an ordinary man who becomes extraordinary in a new world) proved irresistible to readers.
The novel initiated an eleven-book Barsoom series and essentially created the planetary romance subgenre. Its influence on subsequent science fiction and fantasy is incalculable: Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, the Green Lantern Corps, James Cameron’s Avatar, and George Lucas’s Star Wars all owe debts to Burroughs’s Mars.
Collecting A Princess of Mars
First edition (A.C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1917): Red cloth binding, gold lettering.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $3,000–$8,000
- Very good/very good: $1,200–$3,000
- Good: $400–$1,200
- Magazine first (All-Story, Feb 1912): $5,000–$15,000