Dejah Thoris: John Carter’s Comely Princess of Mars

Pulp legend Edgar Rice Burroughs created the character of Dejah Thoris as a noble love-interest for John Carter of Virginia in A Princess of Mars, serialized first in  All-Story Magazine in 1912 from February–July, then collected and published as a hardback novel in 1917.

A Princess of Mars was the first in a series of Barsoom novels – Barsoom being the martian name for the planet Mars. The novel featured a seminal instance of inter-planetary romance between John Carter, an earth man, and Dejah Thoris, a martian woman and heir to the throne of Helium (a city-state). The series of novels also featured Tars Tarkas, a wise but fierce six-limbed green man of Mars; Woola, John Carter’s deceptively nimble and loyal martian hound; and a host of satellite heroes, love interests and villains, including the great six-limbed white ape.

Burroughs’ Barsoom series of novels inspired a number of well-known 20th-century science fiction writers, including Jack Vance, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and many others. The Barsoom books likewise inspired many readers who would become scientists engaged in space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life, such as Carl Sagan, who read A Princess of Mars when he was a child.

Info about Dejah Thoris coming soon…

Sources: Wikipedia.com (A Princess of Mars)