The John Carter stories were written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who is better known as the creator of Tarzan. Before he started the Tarzan series, Burroughs had already written a great many short stories and some novels.

John Carter features in what became known as the Barsoom series. Barsoom is the name that Burroughs gave to the planet Mars. He started the stories in 1911, about the same time as the Tarzan series; they were serialised in magazines for some years, and then in 1917 the first complete Barsoom/ john Carter novel, A Princess of Mars, was published in book form. Burroughs kept writing about John Carter until the 1940s, publishing 11 books and a number of short stories about his adventures.

For a long time the Barsoom stories were almost forgotten, unlike the world famous Tarzan. However, thanks to the new hugely successful film of John Carter, it seems likely that readers and film directors will revisit some of these books and there will no doubt be plenty of sequels.