Mars in the title

Abstract

Edgar Rice Burroughs, one of the most financially successful and culturally influential authors in history, future creator of Tarzan, struggled to find a title for his first attempt at fiction. While writing it, he tried My First Adventure of Mars, The Green Martians, and Dejah Thoris, Martian Princess. He used that last when he submitted the first of three projected installments to Thomas Newell Metcalf, the managing editor of The All-Story magazine. After revising and augmenting the work on the basis of his own imagination and Metcalf’s editorial advice, Burroughs submitted a completed manuscript which Metcalf told him in his acceptance letter would be published as In the Moons of Mars. When it began its serial publication in February 1912, however, it was called Under the Moons of Mars. It was instantly popular under that title, but when McClurg & Company brought it out as a free-standing book in 1917, it bore the title A Princess of Mars (Wikipedia, A Princess of Mars). Why all this indecision about a title? Because titles are enormously important.