It was serialized in 1938 in six weekly installments from January 8 to February 12 in Argosy, the same publication where the previous two Venus novels appeared.

It was published in book form a year later from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Burroughs originally submitted the novel to a number of the "slick" magazines: Liberty, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and Ladies' Home Journal.

[1] The novel, which was written two years before the outbreak of World War II, satirizes Nazi Germany by including a fascist political faction called the "Zani".

[2] It also indicates a change of political orientation from that of the earlier books, where the villains were modeled on Russian Communists.

Carson of Venus was nominated for a Retro-Hugo Award for best science fiction novel of 1939.