TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN - 1924
Written
Jun to Nov 1923
ERB's working title
Tarzan and the Ant Men
First published
Argosy All-Story Weekly magazine, Feb to Mar 1924
Magazine title
Tarzan and the Ant Men
First hardcover edition
A C McClurg & Co, Sep 1924
Book illustrator
J Allen St John
Filmed
No
BACKGROUND
The original story for this work came from Bob Davis, editor of All-Story.  In February 1923 he suggested, "Why not place Tarzan among the Lilliputians or some type of tiny people."  Ed scrapped his plans to write a story about Tarzan in Abyssinia, consulted a book about ants and commenced work on the story about little people the following May.  He eventually spent five months working on the story, developing complicated details of Minunian customs and social structures, a process that required intense planning.  The four-page worksheets he produced are complete with glossary , chapter headings, word counts, maps, measurements and dimensions.  This exceptional work, considered by many scholars to be amongst ERB's best work, was published in serial form in All-Story magazine between 2 February and 17 March 1924.  The hardcover novel, with illustrations by J Allen St John was published later the same year. (Porges)
PLOT
No man had ever penetrated the great Thorn Forest until Tarzan of the Apes crashed his plane behind it on his first solo flight.  Within lay a beautiful country.  But in it lived the Alali, strange stone-age giants whose women regarded all man as less than slaves.  And beyond the Alali lay the country of the Ant-Men - little people only eighteen inches tall.  There, in Trohanadalmakus, Tarzan was an honored guest - until he was captured by the warriors of Veltopismakus in one of the ant-men's wars.  They had their plans for the ape-man.  By the advanced science of the little men, Tarzan was shrunk to their size and set to work as a quarry slave. (1978 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 1924 A C McClurg hardcover edition was pilfered from an eBay auction item
• Boris Vallejo cover from 1978 Ballantine edition is from my personal collection
• Robert Abbett cover from 1969 Ballantine edition is from my personal collection
• February 1924 Argosy All-Story Weekly cover was pilfered from an eBay auction item
LYNX
• The full text of this novel is available on-line from Project Guttenburg's Tarzan and the Ant Men page
• Read a summary of this novel at Tangor's Tarzan and the Ant Men Summarized page
• Colourful paperback covers are at Nick Knowles' Tarzan and the Ant Men page
CAPTURE
• Bag yourself a copy of this novel at Amazon.com's Tarzan and the Ant Men 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