A Princess of Mars
core novel 1917 Barsoom
Record
| First published | 1917 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.81 (61,599 ratings, collected 2026-09-06) |
| Page count | 186 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781951537241 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
A Princess of Mars follows John Carter, a former Confederate cavalry officer prospecting in Arizona who is mysteriously transported from a cave to the planet Mars, known to its inhabitants as Barsoom. Mars's lighter gravity grants him extraordinary strength and leaping ability compared to the native Martians, and he is soon captured by the Tharks, a warlike, six-limbed green Martian tribe who value combat prowess above all else. Carter's fighting skill earns him status among the Tharks, and he becomes entangled in the planet's tribal rivalries after the Tharks take captive Dejah Thoris, princess of the red Martian city-state of Helium. As Carter learns Barsoom's customs, its dying seas and ancient canals, and the constant warfare between its peoples, his growing bond with Dejah Thoris draws him into the opening conflict of a planet on the edge of ecological collapse.
Where it sits
- Universe: Barsoom
- Series: Barsoom core; position 1 of 11 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Notes
- ISBN recorded is the Edgar Rice Burroughs Authorized Library hardcover (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., 2020s); the first book edition predates ISBNs.
- From the series record (Barsoom): Edgar Rice Burroughs' foundational planetary-romance saga of the fictional Mars ('Barsoom'), beginning with A Princess of Mars. All eleven books first appeared as magazine serials (1912-1943, Weird Tales/All-Story/Blue Book/Amazing Stories/Argosy) before their book-form publication years recorded here. Llana of Gathol (1948) is a fix-up of four linked novelettes; John Carter of Mars (1964) is a posthumous collection of two novellas. Genre-boundary transparency: the series is routinely classified as science fantasy / planetary romance, blending science-fiction trappings (interplanetary travel) with sword-and-sorcery adventure and magic-adjacent Barsoomian technology; critical and reference consensus (Wikipedia, genre reference works) treats it as fantasy-adjacent and foundational to the sword-and-planet subgenre, admitted here on that basis, the same transparency this project has applied to Pern and other genre-boundary cases. No awards could be confidently corroborated against a primary source at this pass; none are recorded.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Barsoom: position 1 of 11: next The Gods of Mars (1918)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Barsoom
- Wikipedia: Edgar Rice Burroughs bibliography
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars
- Books-A-Million (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. edition record)
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