Jungle Tales of Tarzan

JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN - 1919

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Written

Mar 1916 to Mar 1917

ERB's working title

The New Tarzan Stories

First published

Blue Book magazine, Sep 1916 to Aug 1917

Magazine title

The New Tarzan Stories

First hardcover edition

A C McClurg & Co, Mar 1919

Book illustrator

J Allen St John

Filmed

1928, but bears little resemblance

BACKGROUND
Porges describes ERB's early attempts at writing short fiction using characters and settings drawn from ordinary life as "mawkish and trite". When he turned his talents to the purely imaginative, an area that interested and simulated him, however, the results were different. When he worked directly from his own active mind Ed had a rare talent for creating memorable and excitingly vivid stories. In March 1916 he began the first of twelve short Tarzan stories, completing the final one in March 1917. Between September 1916 and August 1917 one was published each month in Blue Book magazine . They paid $350 for each story, earning ERB a total of $4,200, the most he had earned on a Tarzan project to date. All of the stories describe events in Tarzan's life in the jungle as a young man prior to the events depicted in Tarzan of the Apes (1912). Many of the stories dealt with universal themes - first love, the search for the meaning of existence, the longing for companionship and the inevitability of old age. McClurg continued to produce the book editions, releasing the collected short stories in 1919. (Porges)

PLOT
The young Tarzan was unlike the great apes who were his only companions and playmates. Theirs was a simple, savage life, filled with little but killing and being killed. But Tarzan had all of a normal boy's desire to learn. He had painfully taught himself to read from books left by his dead father. Now he sought to apply this book knowledge to the world around him. He sought for such things as the source of dreams and the whereabouts of God. And he searched for the love and affection that every human being needs. But he was alone in his struggles to grow and understand. The life of the jungle had no room for abstractions. (1977 Ballantine paperback)

SOURCES
• Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan by Irwin Porges, 1975, Brigham Young University Press
COVERS
• Frank Frazetta cover from 1963 Ace paperback edition was pilfered from an eBay auction item
• Burne Hogarth cover from 1971 Dutch Westfriesland paperback edition was pilfered from an eBay auction item
• Unidentified artist cover from 1921 Dutch Rijswijk hardcover edition was pilfered from an eBay auction item
• J Allen St John cover from the dustjacket of the 1919 A C McClurg hardcover edition was pilfered from an eBay auction item
LYNX
• The full text of this novel is available on-line from the Free Online Library Jungle Tales of Tarzan page
• Read a summary of this novel at Tangor's Jungle Tales of Tarzan Summarized page
• Colourful paperback covers are at Nick Knowles' Jungle Tales of Tarzan page
CAPTURE
• Bag yourself a copy of this novel at Amazon.com's Jungle Tales of Tarzan page or try eBay

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