THE BEASTS OF TARZAN - 1916
Written
Jan to Feb 1914
ERB's working title
The Beasts of Tarzan
First published
All Story Cavalier Weekly magazine, May to Jun 1914
Magazine title
The Beasts of Tarzan
First hardcover edition
A C McClurg & Co, Mar 1916
Book illustrator
J Allen St John
Filmed
No
BACKGROUND
Since his last Tarzan story ERB had written seven different non-Tarzan stories, all written in 1913, a period of abundant creativity for him.  With his third Tarzan story Ed created a "first" in the annals of story marketing by submitting the story to both New Story and All-Story magazines at the same time.  No author had ever attempted this kind of brazen bidding war before.  After much dickering back and forward Ed sold the story to All-Story, now the amalgamated All-Story Cavalier, who had regretted passing up The Return of Tarzan.  They paid $2,500 for the story, probably the largest amount of money that magazine had ever considered paying for a manuscript, proving that Ed's strategy was a successful one.  The story was serialised from May to June 1914 and the hardcover novel was published by McClurg in early 1916. (Porges)
PLOT
Now that he was the rich Lord Greystoke, Tarzan became the target of greedy and evil men. His son was kidnapped, his wife had been abducted, and Tarzan was stranded on a desert island where he seemed helpless. But with the help of Sheeta, the vicious panther, and the great ape, Akut, Tarzan began his escape. Together with the giant Mugambi, they reached the mainland and took up the trail of the kidnappers. Tarzan sought his wife and his child - and he sought such vengeance as only a human beast of the jungle could devise. But the men Tarzan sought had fled deep into the interior - and the trail was old and well hidden. (1975 Ballantine paperback)
SOURCES
• Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan by Irwin Porges, 1975, Brigham Young University Press
COVERS
• J Allen St John cover from the dustjacket of the 1916 A C McClurg hardcover edition was pilfered from an eBay auction item
• Edward Mortelmans' cover from 1960 Four Square Books edition is from my personal collection
• Burne Hogarth cover from 1972 Flamingo Books UK paperback edition was pilfered from an eBay auction item
• Frank Frazetta cover from 1963 Ace paperback edition was pilfered from an eBay auction item
LYNX
• The full text of this novel is available on-line from Robert Stockton's The Beasts of Tarzan page
• Read a summary of this novel at Tangor's The Beasts of Tarzan Summarized page
• Colourful paperback covers are at Nick Knowles' The Beasts of Tarzan page
CAPTURE
• Bag yourself a copy of this novel at Amazon.com's The Beasts of Tarzan page or try eBay
Tarzan© is the property of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., Tarzana CA.
This independent, non-profit, fan-based analysis of the Tarzan material is copyright © 2002-2007 Paul Wickham
This page updated July 2006