From Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs
“I was not writing because of any urge to write nor for any particular love of writing. I was writing because I had a wife and two babies…I loathed poverty and I would have liked to put my hands on the party who said poverty is an honorable estate. It is an indication of inefficiency and nothing more. There is nothing fine or honorable about it…”
“…I wrote Tarzan of the Apes evenings and holidays. I wrote it in longhand on the backs of old letterheads and odd pieces of paper. I did not think it was a very good story and I doubted it would sell. But Bob Davis saw its possibilities for magazine publication and I got a check this time, I think, for $700.”
“I met with no encouragment. Every well-known [book] publisher in the United States turned down Tarzan of the Apes, including A.C. McClurg and Company, who finally issued it, my first story in book form.”
Wade Rockett 