Tarzan
Encyclopedia
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...

 feral child
Feral child
A feral child is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language...

 raised in the Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

n jungles by the Mangani
Mangani
Mangani is the name of a fictional species of great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and of the invented language used by these apes. In the invented language, Mangani is the apes' word for their own kind, although the term is also applied to humans...

 "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer. Created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...

, Tarzan first appeared in the novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 Tarzan of the Apes
Tarzan of the Apes
Tarzan of the Apes is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first in a series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine in October, 1912; the first book edition was published in 1914. The character was so popular that Burroughs...

 (magazine publication 1912
1912 in literature
The year 1912 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Virginia Stephen marries Leonard Woolf.*Frieda von Richthofen meets D. H. Lawrence.-New books:*Mary Antin - The Promised Land*L...

, book publication 1914
1914 in literature
The year 1914 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The literature of World War I makes its first appearance.*November 7 - The first issue of The New Republic magazine is published....

), and then in twenty-five sequels, three authorized books by other authors, and innumerable works in other media, authorized or not.

Childhood years

Tarzan is the son of a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 Lord
Lord
Lord is a title with various meanings. It can denote a prince or a feudal superior . The title today is mostly used in connection with the peerage of the United Kingdom or its predecessor countries, although some users of the title do not themselves hold peerages, and use it 'by courtesy'...

 and Lady
Lady
The word lady is a polite term for a woman, specifically the female equivalent to, or spouse of, a lord or gentleman, and in many contexts a term for any adult woman...

 who were marooned
Marooning
Marooning is the intentional leaving of someone in a remote area, such as an uninhabited island. The word appears in writing in approximately 1709, and is derived from the term maroon, a word for a fugitive slave, which could be a corruption of Spanish cimarrón, meaning a household animal who has...

 on the Atlantic coast of Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 by mutineers
Mutiny
Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...

. When Tarzan was only an infant, his mother died of natural causes and his father was killed by Kerchak, leader of the ape tribe whom Tarzan was adopted. Tarzan's tribe of apes is known as the Mangani
Mangani
Mangani is the name of a fictional species of great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and of the invented language used by these apes. In the invented language, Mangani is the apes' word for their own kind, although the term is also applied to humans...

, Great Apes of a species unknown to science. Kala is his ape mother. Tarzan is his ape name; his real English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 name is John Clayton, Earl Greystoke (the formal title is Viscount
Viscount
A viscount or viscountess is a member of the European nobility whose comital title ranks usually, as in the British peerage, above a baron, below an earl or a count .-Etymology:...

 Greystoke according to Burroughs in Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (novel)
Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, generally considered the eleventh in his series of books about the title character Tarzan...

; Earl
Earl
An earl is a member of the nobility. The title is Anglo-Saxon, akin to the Scandinavian form jarl, and meant "chieftain", particularly a chieftain set to rule a territory in a king's stead. In Scandinavia, it became obsolete in the Middle Ages and was replaced with duke...

 of Greystoke in later, non-canonical sources, notably the 1984 movie Greystoke
Greystoke - The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes is a 1984 British film directed by Hugh Hudson and based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel Tarzan of the Apes...

). In fact, Burroughs's narrator in Tarzan of the Apes, describes both Clayton and Greystoke as fictitious names – implying that, within the fictional world that Tarzan inhabits, he may have a different real name.

Adult life

As a young adult, Tarzan meets a young American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 woman, Jane Porter
Jane Porter (Tarzan)
Jane Porter is a major character in Edgar Rice Burroughs's series of Tarzan novels, and in adaptations of the saga to other media, particularly film.- In the novels :...

, whom she, her father and others of their party is marooned at exactly the same spot where Tarzan's biological parents were twenty years earlier. When Jane returns to America, Tarzan leaves the jungle in search of her, his one true love. In later books, Tarzan and Jane marry and he lives with her for a time in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. They have one son, Jack, who takes the ape name Korak ("the Killer"). Tarzan is contemptuous of the hypocrisy
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie....

 of civilization
Civilization
Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...

, and he and Jane return to Africa, making their home on an extensive estate that becomes a base for Tarzan's later adventures.

Legacy

Burroughs created an extreme example of a hero figure largely unalloyed with character flaws or faults. He is described as being Caucasian, extremely athletic, tall, handsome, and tanned, with grey eyes and long black hair. Emotionally, he is courageous, loyal and steadfast. He is intelligent and learns new languages easily. He is presented as behaving ethically in most situations, except when seeking vengeance under the motivation of grief, as when his ape mother Kala is killed in Tarzan of the Apes, or when he believes Jane has been murdered in Tarzan the Untamed. He is deeply in love with his wife and totally devoted to her; in numerous situations where other women express their attraction to him, Tarzan politely but firmly declines their attentions. When presented with a situation where a weaker individual or party is being preyed upon by a stronger foe, Tarzan invariably takes the side of the weaker party. In dealing with other men Tarzan is firm and forceful. With male friends he is reserved but deeply loyal and generous. As a host, he is likewise generous and gracious. As a leader, he commands devoted loyalty.

In keeping with these noble characteristics, Tarzan's philosophy embraces an extreme form of "return to nature". Although he is able to pass within society as a civilized individual, he prefers to "strip off the thin veneer of civilization", as Burroughs often puts it. His preferred dress is a knife and a loincloth
Loincloth
A loincloth is a one-piece male garment, sometimes kept in place by a belt, which covers the genitals and, at least partially, the buttocks.-History and types:Loincloths are being and have been worn:*in societies where no other clothing is needed or wanted...

 of animal hide, his preferred abode is any convenient tree branch when he desires to sleep, and his favored food is raw meat, killed by himself; even better if he is able to bury it a week so that putrefaction has had a chance to tenderize it a bit.

Tarzan's primitivist philosophy was absorbed by countless fans, amongst whom was Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, DBE , is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National...

, who describes the Tarzan series as having a major influence on her childhood. She states that she felt she would be a much better spouse for Tarzan than his fictional wife, Jane, and that when she first began to live among and study the chimpanzee
Chimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...

s she was fulfilling her childhood dream of living among the great apes just as Tarzan did.

Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

's Mowgli
Mowgli
Mowgli is a fictional character from India who originally appeared in Rudyard Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" and then went on to become the most prominent and memorable character in his fantasies, The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book , which also featured stories about other...

 has been cited as a major influence on Edgar Rice Burroughs' creation of Tarzan. Mowgli was also an influence for a number of other "wild boy" characters.

Skills and abilities

Tarzan's jungle upbringing gives him abilities far beyond those of ordinary humans. These include climbing, clinging, and leaping as well as any great ape, or better. He uses branches and hanging vines to swing at great speed, a skill acquired among the anthropoid apes.

His strength, speed, agility, reflexes, senses, flexibility, and swimming are extraordinary in comparison to normal men. He has wrestled full grown bull apes and gorillas, lions, rhinos, crocodiles, pythons, sharks, tigers, man-size seahorses (once) and even dinosaurs (when he visited Pellucidar
Pellucidar
Pellucidar is a fictional Hollow Earth milieu invented by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs for a series of action adventure stories. In a notable crossover event between Burroughs' series, there is a Tarzan story in which the Ape Man travels into Pellucidar.The stories initially involve the...

).

He learns a new language in days, ultimately speaking many languages, including that of the great apes, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

, many Bantu
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...

 dialects, Arabic, ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

, ancient Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, Mayan
Mayan languages
The Mayan languages form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million indigenous Maya, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras...

, the languages of the Ant Men
Tarzan and the Ant Men
Tarzan and the Ant Men is the tenth book in Edgar Rice Burroughs' series of novels about the jungle hero Tarzan. It was first published as a seven-part serial in the magazine Argosy All-Story Weekly for February 2, 9, 16, and 23 and March 1, 8, and 15, 1924. It was first published in book form in...

 and of Pellucidar
Pellucidar
Pellucidar is a fictional Hollow Earth milieu invented by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs for a series of action adventure stories. In a notable crossover event between Burroughs' series, there is a Tarzan story in which the Ape Man travels into Pellucidar.The stories initially involve the...

.

He also communicates with many species of jungle animals.

Literature

Tarzan has been called one of the best-known literary characters in the world. In addition to more than two dozen books by Burroughs and a handful more by authors with the blessing of Burroughs' estate, the character has appeared in film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

s, radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

, television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

, comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

s, and comic books. Numerous parodies and pirated works have also appeared.

Science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 author Philip José Farmer
Philip José Farmer
Philip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories....

 wrote Tarzan Alive, a biography of Tarzan utilizing the frame device that he was a real person. In Farmer's fictional universe, Tarzan, along with Doc Savage
Doc Savage
Doc Savage is a fictional character originally published in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L...

 and Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

, are the cornerstones of the Wold Newton family
Wold Newton family
The Wold Newton family is a literary concept derived from a form of crossover fiction developed by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer...

. Farmer wrote two novels, Hadon of Ancient Opar
Hadon of Ancient Opar
Hadon of Ancient Opar is a fantasy novel by Philip José Farmer, first published in paperback by DAW Books in April 1974, and reprinted three times through 1993. The first British edition was published by Magnum in 1977...

 and Flight to Opar
Flight to Opar
Flight to Opar is a fantasy novel by Philip José Farmer, first published in paperback by DAW Books in June 1976, and reprinted twice through 1983. The first British edition was published by Magnum in 1977....

, set in the distant past and giving the antecedents of the lost city of Opar, which plays an important role in the Tarzan books. In addition, Farmer's A Feast Unknown
A Feast Unknown
A Feast Unknown is a novel written by American author Philip José Farmer. The novel is a pastiche of pulp fiction, erotica, and horror fiction...

, and its two sequels Lord of the Trees
Lord of the Trees
Lord of the Trees is an American novel by Philip José Farmer. Originally released in 1970, it was one of two intertwining sequels to Farmer's previous A Feast Unknown, along with The Mad Goblin...

 and The Mad Goblin
The Mad Goblin
The Mad Goblin is an American novel by Philip José Farmer. Originally released in 1970, it was one of two intertwining sequels to Farmer's previous A Feast Unknown, along with Lord of the Trees...

, are pastiches of the Tarzan and Doc Savage stories, with the premise that they tell the story of the "real" characters the fictional characters are based upon. A Feast Unknown is somewhat infamous among Tarzan and Doc Savage fans for its graphic violence and sexual content.

Even though the copyright on Tarzan of the Apes has expired
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

 in the United States of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, the name Tarzan is still protected as a trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...

 of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. is an American company founded in 1923 by author Edgar Rice Burroughs. It is based in Tarzana, California. The company holds the rights to the literary works of Burroughs that are still protected by copyright .Burroughs was one of the first artists to...

 Also, the work remains under copyright in some other countries where copyright terms are longer.

Critical reception

While Tarzan of the Apes met with some critical success, subsequent books in the series received a cooler reception and have been criticized for being derivative and formulaic. The characters are often said to be two-dimensional, the dialogue wooden, and the storytelling devices (such as excessive reliance on coincidence
Coincidence
A coincidence is an event notable for its occurring in conjunction with other conditions, e.g. another event. As such, a coincidence occurs when something uncanny, accidental and unexpected happens under conditions named, but not under a defined relationship...

) strain credulity. According to author Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

 (who himself wrote stories of a feral child
Feral child
A feral child is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language...

, The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book is a collection of stories by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–4. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six...

s Mowgli
Mowgli
Mowgli is a fictional character from India who originally appeared in Rudyard Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" and then went on to become the most prominent and memorable character in his fantasies, The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book , which also featured stories about other...

), Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes just so that he could "find out how bad a book he could write and get away with it."

While Burroughs is not a polished novelist, he is a vivid storyteller, and many of his novels are still in print. In 1963, author Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

 wrote a piece on the Tarzan series that, while pointing out several of the deficiencies that the Tarzan books have as works of literature, praises Edgar Rice Burroughs for creating a compelling "daydream figure".

Despite critical panning, the Tarzan stories have remained popular. Burroughs's melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

tic situations and the elaborate details he works into his fictional world, such as his construction of a partial language for his great apes, appeal to a worldwide fan base.

The Tarzan books and movies employ extensive stereotyping
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

 to a degree common in the times in which they were written. This has led to criticism in later years, with changing social views and customs, including charges of racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

 since the early 1970s. The early books give a pervasively negative and stereotypical portrayal of native Africans, both Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

 and Black
Black
Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...

. In The Return of Tarzan, Arabs are "surly looking" and call Christians "dogs", while blacks are "lithe, ebon warriors, gesticulating and jabbering". One could make an equal argument that when it came to blacks that Burroughs was simply depicting unwholesome characters as unwholesome and the good ones in a better light as in Chapter 6 of Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fifth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. It first appeared in the November and December issues of All-Story Cavalier Weekly in 1916, and the first book publication was by McClurg in 1918.-Plot...

 where Burroughs writes of Mugambi, "...nor could a braver or more loyal guardian have been found in any clime or upon any soil." Other groups are stereotyped as well. A Swede has "a long yellow moustache, an unwholesome complexion, and filthy nails", and Russians cheat at cards. The aristocracy (except the House of Greystoke) and royalty are invariably effete. In later books, Africans are portrayed somewhat more realistically as people. For example, in Tarzan's Quest
Tarzan's Quest
Tarzan's Quest is a 1936 novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the nineteenth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan.-Plot:...

, while the depiction of black Africans remains relatively primitive, they are portrayed more individualistically, with a greater variety of character traits, good and bad, while the main villains are whites. Burroughs never loses his distaste for European royalty, though.

Burroughs' opinions, manifested through the narrative voice in the stories, reflect common attitudes in his time, which in a 21st-century context would be considered racist and sexist. However Thomas F. Bertonneau writes about Burroughs "conception of the feminine that elevates the woman to the same level as the man and that – in such characters as Dian of the Pellucidar novels or Dejah Thoris of the Barsoom novels – figures forth a female type who corresponds neither to desperate housewife, full-lipped prom-date, middle-level careerist office-manager, nor frowning ideological feminist-professor, but who exceeds all these by bounds in her realized humanity and in so doing suggests their insipidity." The author is not especially mean-spirited in his attitudes. His heroes do not engage in violence against women
Violence against women
Violence against women is a technical term used to collectively refer to violent acts that are primarily or exclusively committed against women...

 or in racially motivated violence
Ethnic hatred
Ethnic hatred, inter-ethnic hatred, racial hatred, or ethnic tension refers to feelings and acts of prejudice and hostility towards an ethnic group in various degrees. See list of anti-ethnic and anti-national terms for specific cases....

. In Tarzan of the Apes, details of a background of suffering experienced at the hands of whites by Mbonga's "once great" people are repeatedly told with evident sympathy, and in explanation or even justification of their current animosity toward whites.

Nonetheless, a superior-inferior relationship with valuation accordingly implied, is unmistakable in virtually all interactions between whites and blacks in the Tarzan stories, and similar relationships and valuations can be seen in most other interactions between differing people although one could argue that such interactions are the bedrock of the dramatic narrative and without such valuations there is no story. According to James Loewen
James Loewen
James W. Loewen is a sociologist, historian, and author whose best-known work is Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong .-Early life and career:...

's Sundown Towns, this may be a vestige of Burroughs' having been from Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park, Illinois is a suburb bordering the west side of the city of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is the twenty-fifth largest municipality in Illinois. Oak Park has easy access to downtown Chicago due to public transportation such as the Chicago 'L' Blue and Green lines,...

, a former Sundown town
Sundown town
A sundown town is a town that is or was purposely all-White. The term is widely used in the United States in areas from Ohio to Oregon and well into the South. The term came from signs that were allegedly posted stating that people of color had to leave the town by sundown...

 (a town that forbids non-whites from living within it).

Gail Bederman takes a different view in her Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. There she describes how various people of the time either challenged or upheld the idea that "civilization" is predicated on white masculinity. She closes with a chapter on 1912's Tarzan of the Apes because the story's protagonist is, according to her, the ultimate male by the standards of 1912 white America. Bederman does note that Tarzan, "an instinctivily chivalrous Anglo-Saxon" does not engage in sexual violence, renouncing his "masculine impulse to rape." However, she also notes that not only does Tarzan kill black man Kulonga in revenge for killing his ape mother (a stand in for his biological white mother) by hanging him, "lyncher Tarzan" actually enjoys killing black people, the cannibalistic Mbongans, for example. Bederman, in fact, reminds readers that when Tarzan first introduces himself to Jane he does so as "Tarzan, the killer of beasts and many black men." The novel climaxes with Tarzan saving Jane—who in the original novel is not British but a white woman from Baltimore, Maryland—from a black ape rapist. When he leaves the jungle and sees "civilized" Africans farming, his first instinct is to kill them just for being black. "Like the lynch victims reported in the Northern press, Tarzan's victims--cowards, cannibals, and despoilers of white womanhood--lack all manhood. Tarzan's lynchings thus prove himself the superior man."

Despite embodying all the tropes of white supremacy espoused or rejected by the people she had reviewed (Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

, G. Stanley Hall
G. Stanley Hall
Granville Stanley Hall was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory...

, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...

, Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an African American journalist, newspaper editor and, with her husband, newspaper owner Ferdinand L. Barnett, an early leader in the civil rights movement. She documented lynching in the United States, showing how it was often a way to control or punish blacks who...

), Bederman states that, in all probability, Burroughs was not trying to make any kind of statement or echo any of them. "He probably never heard of any of them." Instead, Bederman writes that Burroughs proves her point because in telling racist and sexist stories whose protagonist boasted of killing blacks, he was not being unusual at all but was instead just being a typical 1912 white American.

Unauthorized works

After Burroughs' death a number of writers produced new Tarzan stories without the permission of his estate. In some instances, the estate managed to prevent publication of such unauthorized pastiches. The most notable exception in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 was a series of five novels by the pseudonymous "Barton Werper" that appeared 1964-65 by Gold Star Books (part of Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics was an American comic book publishing company that existed from 1946 to 1985, having begun under a different name in 1944. It was based in Derby, Connecticut...

). As a result of legal action by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. is an American company founded in 1923 by author Edgar Rice Burroughs. It is based in Tarzana, California. The company holds the rights to the literary works of Burroughs that are still protected by copyright .Burroughs was one of the first artists to...

, they were taken off the market and remaining copies destroyed.
Similar series appeared in other countries, notably Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, and some Arab countries.

In Israel in the 1950s and early 1960s there was a thriving industry of locally-produced Tarzan adventures published weekly in 24-page brochures by several competing publishing houses, none of which bothered to get any authorization from the Burroughs estate. The stories featured Tarzan in contemporary Africa, a popular theme being his fighting against the Mau Mau in 1950s Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

 and single-handedly crushing their revolt several times over. He also fought a great variety of monsters, vampires and invaders from outer space infesting the African jungles, and discovered several more lost cities and cultures in addition to the ones depicted in the Burroughs canon. Some brochures had him meet with Israelis and take Israel's side against her Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

 enemies, especially Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...

's Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

.

None of the brochures ever bore a writer's name, and the various publishers - "Elephant Publishing" , "Rhino Publishing" and several similar names - provided no more of an address than POB numbers in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

 and Jerusalem. These Tarzan brochures were extremely popular among Israeli youths of the time, successfully competing with the numerous Hebrew translations of the original Tarzan novels, and are recalled with nostalgia by many Israelis now in their fifties. The Tarzan brochures faded out by the middle 1960s, surviving copies at present fetching high prices as collectors' items in the Israeli used-book market. Researcher Eli Eshed
Eli Eshed
Eli Eshed is an Israeli researcher of popular culture who has spent considerable time and effort analyzing the Israeli pulp magazines and paperbacks of the 1950s and 1960s....

 has spent considerable time and effort on the Tarzan brochures and other Israeli pulp magazines and paperbacks. (Hebrew website with cover of "Tarzan's War Against the Germans").

The popularity of Tarzan in Israel had some effect on the spoken Hebrew language. As it happens, "tarzan" is a long-established Hebrew word, translatable as "dandy, fop, coxcomb" (according to R. Alcalay's Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary of 1990). However, a word could not survive with that meaning while being identical with the name of a popular fictional character usually depicted as wearing a loincloth and jumping from tree to tree in the jungle. Since the 1950s the word in its original meaning has completely disappeared from the spoken language, and is virtually unknown to Hebrew speakers at present - though still duly appearing in dictionaries.

In the 1950s Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

 and Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

 also saw the flourishing of unauthorized Tarzan stories. Tarzan in these versions was a staunch supporter of the Arab cause and helped his Arab friends foil various fiendish Israeli plots.

Film

The Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...

 lists 89 movies with Tarzan in the title between 1918 and 2008. The first Tarzan movies were silent pictures adapted from the original Tarzan novels, which appeared within a few years of the character's creation. The first actor to portray the adult Tarzan was Elmo Lincoln
Elmo Lincoln
Elmo Lincoln was an American film actor.Born Otto Elmo Linkenhelt, the barrel-chested actor is best known in his silent movie role as the first Tarzan in 1918's Tarzan of the Apes as an adult --...

 in 1918's Tarzan Of The Apes. With the advent of talking pictures, a popular Tarzan movie franchise was developed, which lasted from the 1930s through the 1960s. Starting with Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932 through twelve films until 1948, the franchise was anchored by former Olympic
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

 swimmer Johnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller was an Austro-Hungarian-born American swimmer and actor best known for playing Tarzan in movies. Weissmuller was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven...

 in the title role. Weissmuller and his immediate successors were enjoined to portray the ape-man as a pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...

-speaking noble savage
Noble savage
The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...

, in marked contrast to the cultured aristocrat of Burroughs's novels.

This "me Tarzan, you Jane" characterization of Tarzan persisted until the late 1950s, when producer Sy Weintraub
Sy Weintraub
Sy Weintraub was a movie and television producer best known for his series of Tarzan films and television episodes between 1959 and 1968. Weintraub broke with the Johnny Weissmuller formula of portraying Tarzan as a pidgin-speaking noble savage who lives in a treehouse with Jane and Boy...

, having bought the film rights from producer Sol Lesser, produced Tarzan's Greatest Adventure
Tarzan's Greatest Adventure
Tarzan's Greatest Adventure is a 1959 adventure film directed by John Guillermin, produced by Sy Weintraub and Harvey Hayutin, and written by Les Crutchfield . The film features a literate Tarzan portrayed by Gordon Scott. The character of Jane does not appear. Cheeta only appears a few times...

 followed by eight other films and a television series. The Weintraub productions portray a Tarzan that is closer to Edgar Rice Burroughs' original concept in the novels: a jungle lord who speaks grammatical English and is well educated and familiar with civilization. Most Tarzan films made before the mid-fifties were black-and-white films shot on studio sets, with stock jungle footage edited in. The Weintraub productions from 1959 on were shot on foreign locations and were in color.

There were also several serials and features that competed with the main franchise, including Tarzan the Fearless
Tarzan the Fearless
Tarzan the Fearless is a 12 chapter film serial starring Buster Crabbe in his only appearance as Tarzan. It was also released as a 71-minute feature film which comprised the first four chapters of the serial version. Co-starring was actress Jacqueline Wells, who later changed her name to Julie...

 (1933) starring Buster Crabbe
Buster Crabbe
Clarence Linden "Buster" Crabbe was an American athlete and actor, who starred in a number of popular serials in the 1930s and 1940s.-Birth:...

 and The New Adventures of Tarzan
The New Adventures of Tarzan
The New Adventures of Tarzan is a 1935 American film serial in 12 chapters. It is a more authentic version of the character than most other adaptations, with Tarzan as a cultured and well educated gentleman as in the original Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. It was filmed during the same period as the...

 (1935) starring Herman Brix (Bruce Bennett
Bruce Bennett
Bruce Bennett was an American actor and Olympic silver medalist shot putter. During the 1930s, he went by his real name, Herman Brix .-Early life and Olympics:...

). The latter serial was unique for its period in that it was partially filmed on location (Guatemala) and portrayed Tarzan as educated. It was the only Tarzan film project for which Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...

 was personally involved in the production.

Tarzan films from the 1930s on often featured Tarzan's chimpanzee companion Cheeta
Cheeta
Cheeta is a chimpanzee character appearing in numerous Hollywood Tarzan movies of the 1930s–1960s as well as the 1966–1968 television series, as the ape sidekick of the title character, Tarzan...

, his consort Jane (not usually given a last name), and an adopted son, usually known only as "Boy." The Weintraub productions from 1959 on dropped the character of Jane and portrayed Tarzan as a lone adventurer. Later Tarzan films have been occasional and somewhat idiosyncratic. Disney’s
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...

 animated Tarzan
Tarzan (1999 film)
Tarzan is a 1999 American animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on June 18, 1999...

 (1999) marked a new beginning for the ape man, taking its inspiration equally from Burroughs and the 1984 film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.

Radio

Tarzan was the hero of two popular radio programs. The first aired from 1932-1936 with James Pierce
James Pierce
James Hubert Pierce , of Shelbyville, Indiana, was the fourth actor to portray Tarzan on film.-Early life/College/Early film career:...

 in the role of Tarzan. The second ran from 1951-1953 with Lamont Johnson
Lamont Johnson
Lamont Johnson was an American actor and film director who has appeared in and directed many television shows and movies. He won two Emmy Awards....

 in the title role.

Television

Television later emerged as a primary vehicle bringing the character to the public. From the mid 1950s, all the extant sound Tarzan films became staples of Saturday morning television aimed at young and teenaged viewers. In 1958, movie Tarzan Gordon Scott
Gordon Scott
Gordon Scott was an American film and television actor known for his portrayal of the fictional character Tarzan in five films of the Tarzan film series from 1955 to 1960.-Early life, education and military service:He was born Gordon Merrill Werschkul in Portland,...

 filmed three episodes for a prospective television series. The program did not sell, but a different live action Tarzan
Tarzan (NBC series)
Tarzan is a series that aired on NBC from 1966 – 1968. The series portrayed Tarzan as a well-educated character, one who, tired of civilization, had returned to the jungle where he had been raised...

 series produced by Sy Weintraub
Sy Weintraub
Sy Weintraub was a movie and television producer best known for his series of Tarzan films and television episodes between 1959 and 1968. Weintraub broke with the Johnny Weissmuller formula of portraying Tarzan as a pidgin-speaking noble savage who lives in a treehouse with Jane and Boy...

 and starring Ron Ely ran on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 from 1966 to 1968. An animated series from Filmation
Filmation
Filmation Associates was an American production company that produced animation and live action programming for television during the latter half of the 20th century. Located in Reseda, California, the animation studio was founded in 1963...

, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle is an animated series created by the Filmation studio for CBS. There are a total of 36 episodes produced over the first four seasons....

, aired from 1976 to 1977, followed by the anthology programs Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour
Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour
The Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour is a Filmation series that ran on CBS during the 1977–1978 television season. It consisted of the second seasons of Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle and The New Adventures of Batman aired together....

 (1977–1978), Tarzan and the Super 7
Tarzan and the Super 7
Tarzan and the Super 7, was a Saturday morning cartoon series, produced by Filmation and originally airing from 1978–1980 on CBS.The show consisted of separate installments featuring seven groups of adventurers;* Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle...

 (1978–1980), The Tarzan/Lone Ranger Adventure Hour
The Tarzan/Lone Ranger Adventure Hour
The Tarzan / Lone Ranger adventure hour is an animated television series produced by Filmation that aired on CBS during the early 1980s....

 (1980–1981), and The Tarzan/Lone Ranger/Zorro Adventure Hour) (1981–1982). Joe Lara
Joe Lara
William Joseph Lara is an American actor and musician, best known in the role of Tarzan in the American TV series Tarzan: The Epic Adventures.-Career:...

 starred in the title role in Tarzan in Manhattan
Tarzan in Manhattan
Tarzan in Manhattan is an action adventure CBS television movie. Joe Lara portrays Tarzan, and Kim Crosby appears as Jane Porter. Tony Curtis and Jan Michael Vincent co-star. The telefilm was produced by Max A. Keller, Micheline H...

 (1989), an offbeat TV movie, and later returned in a completely different interpretation in Tarzan: The Epic Adventures
Tarzan: The Epic Adventures
Tarzan: The Epic Adventures is a syndicated series that aired for one season . It focuses on the character of Tarzan in his early years, after his first exposure to civilization, but before his marriage to Jane Porter...

 (1996), a new live-action series. In between the two productions with Lara, Tarzán
Tarzán
Tarzán was a half-hour syndicated series that aired 1991–1994. In this version of the show, Tarzan was portrayed as a blond environmentalist, with Jane turned into a French ecologist....

, a half-hour syndicated series ran from 1991 through 1994. In this version of the show, Tarzan was portrayed as a blond environmentalist, with Jane turned into a French ecologist. Disney’s animated series The Legend of Tarzan
The Legend of Tarzan
The Legend of Tarzan is an animated television series created by The Walt Disney Company in 2001, based on the Tarzan character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs....

 (2001–2003) was a spin-off from its animated film. The latest television series was the live-action Tarzan
Tarzan (WB series)
Tarzan is an American television series that premiered on October 5, 2003 on The WB. Based on the Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, this TV series was set in New York City, depicting a modern-day adaptation on Burroughs' characters...

 (2003), which starred male model Travis Fimmel
Travis Fimmel
Travis Fimmel is an Australian actor and former model who is currently based in the United States. He is best known for his high-profile Calvin Klein campaign and for co-starring with Patrick Swayze in TV series The Beast shortly before Swayze's death.- Early years :Fimmel was raised as the...

 and updated the setting to contemporary New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, with Jane as a police detective, played by Sarah Wayne Callies
Sarah Wayne Callies
Sarah Wayne Callies is an American actress who is best known for her role as Sara Tancredi in the American television series Prison Break. She now plays Lori Grimes in The Walking Dead.- Early life :...

. The series was cancelled after only eight episodes. A 1981 television special, The Muppets Go to the Movies, features a short sketch entitled "Tarzan and Jane". Lily Tomlin
Lily Tomlin
Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedienne, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960's when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in...

 plays Jane opposite The Great Gonzo
Gonzo (Muppet)
Gonzo the Great is a puppet character, one of Jim Henson's Muppets. He was developed and performed by Dave Goelz. The character made his first appearance in a 1970 Christmas special entitled "The Great Santa Claus Switch". Known as a "Whatever" , he is considered one of The Frackles...

 as Tarzan. In addition, the Muppets have made reference to Tarzan on half a dozen occasions since the 1960s. Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

 featured recurring sketches with the speech-impaired trio of "Frankenstein, Tonto, and Tarzan".

Stage

A 1921 Broadway production of Tarzan of The Apes starred Ronald Adair as Tarzan and Ethel Dwyer as Jane Porter. In 1976, Richard O'Brien
Richard O'Brien
Richard Timothy Smith , better known under his stage name Richard O'Brien, is an English writer, actor, television presenter and theatre performer. He is perhaps best known for writing the cult musical The Rocky Horror Show and for his role in presenting the popular TV show The Crystal Maze...

 wrote a musical entitled T. Zee, loosely based on Tarzan but restyled in a rock idiom. Tarzan
Tarzan (musical)
Tarzan: The Musical is based on the Disney film of the same name and the story by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Music and lyrics are written by Phil Collins, with a book by David Henry Hwang.-Production:...

, a musical stage adaptation of the 1999 animated feature, opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre
Richard Rodgers Theatre
The Richard Rodgers Theatre, is a Broadway theater in New York City, built by Irwin Chanin in 1925. When it was first opened, it was called Chanin's 46th Street Theatre. Chanin almost immediately leased it to the Shuberts, who bought the building outright in 1931 and renamed it the 46th Street...

 on Broadway on May 10, 2006. The show, a Disney Theatrical production, was directed and designed by Bob Crowley. The same version of Tarzan that was played at the Richard Rodgers Theatre
Richard Rodgers Theatre
The Richard Rodgers Theatre, is a Broadway theater in New York City, built by Irwin Chanin in 1925. When it was first opened, it was called Chanin's 46th Street Theatre. Chanin almost immediately leased it to the Shuberts, who bought the building outright in 1931 and renamed it the 46th Street...

 is being played throughout Europe and has been a huge success in Holland. The Broadway show closed on July 8, 2007. Tarzan also appeared in the Tarzan Rocks! show at the Theatre in the Wild at Walt Disney World Resort
Walt Disney World Resort
Walt Disney World Resort , is the world's most-visited entertaimental resort. Located in Lake Buena Vista, Florida ; approximately southwest of Orlando, Florida, United States, the resort covers an area of and includes four theme parks, two water parks, 23 on-site themed resort hotels Walt...

's Disney's Animal Kingdom
Disney's Animal Kingdom
Disney's Animal Kingdom is an animal theme park located at the Walt Disney World Resort. The fourth park built at the resort, it opened on April 22, 1998, and it is the largest single Disney theme park in the world, covering more than . It is also the first Disney theme park to be themed entirely...

. The show closed in 2006.

Video and computer games

In the mid-1980s there was an arcade video game called Jungle King
Jungle Hunt
Jungle Hunt is a one- or two-player side-scrolling arcade platform game produced by Taito in 1982.The player controls a jungle explorer who sports a pith helmet and a safari suit. The player must rescue his girl from a tribe of hungry cannibals...

 that featured a Tarzan-like character in a loin cloth. A game under the title Tarzan Goes Ape was released in the 1980s for the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...

. A Tarzan computer game by Michael Archer was produced by Martech
Martech
Martech Games Ltd was a video game publisher active between 1982 and 1989.Martech was formed by David Martin and brother-in-law John Barry, initially under the name Software Communications Ltd under partnership with a firm of exporters. They were initially based at Bay Terrace, Pevensey Bay, East...

. Disney's Tarzan had seen video games released for the PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...

, Nintendo 64
Nintendo 64
The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...

 and Game Boy Color
Game Boy Color
The is Nintendo's successor to the 8-bit Game Boy handheld game console, and was released on October 21, 1998 in Japan, November 19, 1998 in North America, November 23, 1998 in Europe and November 27, 1998 in the United Kingdom. It features a color screen and is slightly thicker and taller than...

. Followed by Disney's Tarzan Untamed for the PS2 and Gamecube. Tarzan also appeared in the PS2 game Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts
is an action role-playing game developed and published by Square in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 video game console. The first game in the Kingdom Hearts series, it is the result of a collaboration between Square Enix and The Walt Disney Company. The game combines characters and settings from Disney...

, although this Tarzan was shown in the Disney context, not the original conceptional idea of Tarzan by Bourroughs. In the first Rayman
Rayman
Rayman is a platform video game published, produced and developed by Ubisoft and is the first game in the Rayman series of videogames. Originally released on the PlayStation in 1995, it was re-released for the Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn and MS-DOS in 1996. It has also been ported to various formats,...

, a Tarzan-like version of Rayman named Tarayzan appears in the Dream Forest.

Ephemera

Several Tarzan-themed products have been manufactured, including View-Master
View-Master
View-Master is a device for viewing seven 3-D images on a paper disk. Although the View-Master is now considered a children's toy, it was originally marketed as a way for viewers to enjoy stereograms of colorful and picturesque tourist attractions.-1939–66: stereoscopic sightseeing:In 1911,...

 reels and packets, numerous Tarzan coloring books, children's books, follow-the-dots, Airfix
Airfix
Airfix is a UK manufacturer of plastic scale model kits of aircraft and other subjects. In Britain, the name Airfix is synonymous with the hobby, a plastic model of this type is often simply referred to as "an airfix kit" even if made by another manufacturer....

 plastic figures and activity books.

Tarzan in comics

Tarzan of the Apes was adapted in newspaper strip form, in early 1929, with illustrations by Hal Foster. A full page Sunday strip
Sunday strip
A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...

 began March 15, 1931 by Rex Maxon. Over the years, many artists have drawn the Tarzan comic strip, notably Burne Hogarth
Burne Hogarth
Burne Hogarth was an American cartoonist, illustrator, educator, author and theoretician, best known for his pioneering work on the Tarzan newspaper comic strip and his series of anatomy books.-Biography:...

, Russ Manning
Russ Manning
Russell Manning was an American comic book artist who created the series Magnus, Robot Fighter and illustrated such newspaper comic strips as Tarzan and Star Wars...

, and Mike Grell
Mike Grell
Mike Grell is a comic book writer and artist, known for his work on books such as Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Jon Sable Freelance.-Early life:...

. The daily strip began to reprint old dailies after the last Russ Manning daily (#10,308, which ran on 29 July 1972). The Sunday strip also turned to reprints circa 2000. Both strips continue as reprints today in a few newspapers and in Comics Revue
Comics Revue
Comics Revue is a bi-monthly small press comic book published by Manuscript Press and edited by Rick Norwood. Don Markstein edited the publication from 1984 to 1987 and 1992 to 1996....

 magazine. NBM Publishing
NBM Publishing
NBM Publishing is an American publisher of graphic novels. The company specializes in non-superhero comic genres and has translated and published over 150 graphic novels from Europe and Canada, as well as several works by Americans...

 did a high quality reprint series of the Foster and Hogarth work on Tarzan in a series of hardback and paperback reprints in the 1990s.

Tarzan has appeared in many comic books from numerous publishers over the years. The character's earliest comic book appearances were in comic strip reprints published in several titles, such as Sparkler, Tip Top Comics and Single Series. Western Publishing
Western Publishing
Western Publishing, also known as Western Printing and Lithographing Company was a Racine, Wisconsin firm responsible for publishing the Little Golden Books. Western Publishing also produced children's books and family-related entertainment products as Golden Books Family Entertainment...

 published Tarzan in Dell Comics
Dell Comics
Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...

's Four Color Comics
Four Color
Four Color, also known as Four Color Comics and One Shots, was a long-running American comic book anthology series published by Dell Comics between 1939 and 1962...

 #134 & 161 in 1947, before giving him his own series, Tarzan, published through Dell Comics
Dell Comics
Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...

 and later Gold Key Comics
Gold Key Comics
Gold Key Comics was an imprint of Western Publishing created for comic books distributed to newsstands. Also known as Whitman Comics, Gold Key operated from 1962 to 1984.-History:...

 from Jan-Feb 1948 to February, 1972). DC
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

 took over the series in 1972, publishing Tarzan #207-258 from April 1972 to February 1977, including work by Joe Kubert
Joe Kubert
Joe Kubert is an American comic book artist who went on to found The Kubert School. He is best known for his work on the DC Comics characters Sgt. Rock and Hawkman...

. In 1977 the series moved to Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...

, which restarted the numbering rather than assuming that used by the previous publishers. Marvel issued Tarzan #1-28 (as well as three Annuals), from June 1977 to October 1979, mainly by John Buscema
John Buscema
John Buscema, born Giovanni Natale Buscema , was an American comic-book artist and one of the mainstays of Marvel Comics during its 1960s and 1970s ascendancy into an industry leader and its subsequent expansion to a major pop culture conglomerate...

. Following the conclusion of the Marvel series the character had no regular comic book publisher for a number of years. During this period Blackthorne Comics published Tarzan in 1986, and Malibu Comics
Malibu Comics
Malibu Comics was an American comic book publisher active in the late 1980s and early 1990s, best known for its Ultraverse line of superhero titles. The company's headquarters was in Calabasas, California. Malibu imprints included Aircel Comics and Eternity Comics...

 published Tarzan comics in 1992. Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...

 has published various Tarzan series from 1996 to the present, including reprints of works from previous publishers like Gold Key and DC, and joint projects with other publishers featuring crossovers with other characters.

There have also been a number of different comic book projects from other publishers over the years, in addition to various minor appearances of Tarzan in other comic books. The Japanese manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 series Jungle no Ouja Ta-chan (Jungle King Tar-chan
Jungle King Tar-chan
is a manga and anime by Masaya Tokuhiro. Midway through serialization, its name was changed to '.- Overview :The series ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1988 to 1990 as Jungle King Tar-chan, and then from 1990 to 1995 as New Jungle King Tar-chan...

) by Tokuhiro Masaya was based loosely on Tarzan. Also, manga "god" Osamu Tezuka
Osamu Tezuka
was a Japanese cartoonist, manga artist, animator, producer, activist and medical doctor, although he never practiced medicine. Born in Osaka Prefecture, he is best known as the creator of Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and Black Jack...

 created a Tarzan manga in 1948 entitled Tarzan no Himitsu Kichi (Tarzan's Secret Base).

Works inspired by Tarzan

In the 1940s, the Finnish writer Lahja Valakivi published four adventure novels about Tarsa karhumies, i.e., Tarsa the Bear Man. The books were obviously inspired by Tarzan, but they were adapted into a Finnish setting: as there are no apes in Finland, the hero Tarsa was raised by bears instead.

Tarzan's popularity inspired numerous imitators that appeared in pulp magazines
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...

. A number of these like Kwa and Ka-Zar
Ka-Zar of the pulps
Ka-Zar was a short-lived pulp magazine series of three issues about a boy brought up by lions in the jungle, written by Bob Byrd and published by Manvis Publication, Inc., one of several publishers owned by Martin Goodman...

 were direct or loosely veiled copies, others like Polaris of the Snows were similar characters in different settings, or with different gimmicks. Of these characters the most popular was Ki-Gor, he starred in fifty-nine novels that appeared between winter 1939 to spring 1954 in the magazine Jungle Stories.

In 1967, Jay Ward Productions
Jay Ward Productions
Jay Ward Productions was an Amercian animated television cartoon series production company, founded in 1949 by American animator Jay Ward. It made extensive use of limited animation techniques....

 released the animated series George of the Jungle
George of the Jungle
George of the Jungle was an American animated series produced by Jay Ward and Bill Scott, who created The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The character George was inspired by the legend of Tarzan. It ran for 17 episodes on Saturday mornings from September 9 to December 30, 1967, on the American TV...

, a Tarzan-like ape man. Later on a film
George of the Jungle (film)
George of the Jungle is a 1997 live-action, family-oriented, romantic-adventure-comedy film based on the characters from the original cartoon of the same name. The film was produced by Walt Disney Pictures with Mandeville Films and originally released to movie theatres on July 16, 1997...

 was made starring Brendan Fraser
Brendan Fraser
Brendan James Fraser is a Canadian-American film and stage actor. Fraser portrayed Rick O'Connell in the three-part Mummy film series , and is known for his comedic and fantasy film leading roles in major Hollywood films, including Encino Man , George of the Jungle , Dudley Do-Right , Monkeybone ,...

, later a direct-to-video
Direct-to-video
Direct-to-video is a term used to describe a film that has been released to the public on home video formats without being released in film theaters or broadcast on television...

 sequel
George of the Jungle 2
George of the Jungle 2 is the 2003 direct-to-video sequel of the 1997 Disney film George of the Jungle. It was directed by David Grossman, written by Jordan Moffet, and stars Thomas Haden Church, Julie Benz, Christina Pickles, Michael Clarke Duncan, John Cleese, and introducing Christopher...

 was made.

In 2007 a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 remake
George of the Jungle (2007 TV series)
George of the Jungle is a Canadian television series. It is the remake of the 1967 animated series of the same name, using Adobe Flash animation. It is produced in Canada , and more recently in the USA on Cartoon Network, premiering with the Christmas special. In Latin America, it is airing on...

 of the original George of the Jungle cartoon was made, it aired on Teletoon
Télétoon (Canadian TV channel)
Télétoon is a Canadian French language Category A specialty channel that specializes in animation programming. Télétoon is owned by Teletoon Canada Inc; a 50/50 partnership between Astral Media and Corus Entertainment...

 in Canada and Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....

 in America. A video game
George of the Jungle and the Search for the Secret
George of the Jungle and the Search for the Secret is a video game based on the animated television program George of the Jungle. The game is in 3D but plays like a 2D side scrolling platformer game with 3D turns and camera angles in the environment and the path that George walks on...

 based on the show released for the Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...

, PS2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...

, and the Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...

.

The late comedian George Carlin
George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlin was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, actor and author, who won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums....

 mentioned Tarzan when he was doing his HBO stand up It's Bad For Ya
It's Bad for Ya
It's Bad for Ya is the 14th and final HBO stand-up comedy special by stand-up comedian George Carlin. It was televised live on March 1, 2008 on HBO, less than four months before he died of heart failure....

 when he was talking about how to deal with boring people in public or on the phone.

In Asia, Philippine Cinema's inclination in satirizing western entertainment produced Starzan, a comedy film loosely based on the original Tarzan franchise. It stars Filipino comedic actor Joey De Leon as Starzan, Rene Requiestas as "Chitae", and Zsa Zsa Padilla as Jane.

Tarzan appears briefly as a character in the book Lust, by Geoff Ryman
Geoff Ryman
Geoffrey Charles Ryman is a writer of science fiction, fantasy and surrealistic or "slipstream" fiction.Ryman currently lectures in Creative Writing for University of Manchester's English Department. His most recent full-length novel, The King's Last Song, is set in Cambodia, both at the time of...

.

Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...

's The Graveyard Book
The Graveyard Book
The Graveyard Book is a children's fantasy novel by English author Neil Gaiman. The story is about a boy named Nobody Owens, who after his family is murdered is adopted and raised by the occupants of a graveyard...

 had some similar concepts from Tarzan.

Warren Ellis
Warren Ellis
Warren Girard Ellis is an English author of comics, novels, and television, who is well-known for sociocultural commentary, both through his online presence and through his writing, which covers transhumanist themes...

' and John Cassaday
John Cassaday
John Cassaday is an American comic book artist and writer, born in Fort Worth, Texas and currently residing in New York City. He is known for having a high level of precision and realism in his work....

's Planetary
Planetary (comics)
Planetary is an American comic book limited series created by writer Warren Ellis and artist John Cassaday published by the Wildstorm imprint of DC Comics...

 features in its issues 1 and 17 a British Tarzan-like character, Kevin Sack, Lord Blackstock, who was "lost as an infant, raised by jungle fauna" and now (the 1930s in issue 17) "comes back to Africa every few years".

Popular Culture

Tarzan is often used as a nickname to indicate a similarity between a person's characteristics and that of the fictional character. Individuals with an exceptional 'ape-like' ability to climb, cling and leap beyond that of ordinary humans may often receive the nickname 'Tarzan'.

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

Main Series
  1. Tarzan of the Apes
    Tarzan of the Apes
    Tarzan of the Apes is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first in a series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine in October, 1912; the first book edition was published in 1914. The character was so popular that Burroughs...

     (1912) (Project Gutenberg
    Project Gutenberg
    Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...

     Entry:Ebook) (LibriVox.org Audiobook)
  2. The Return of Tarzan
    The Return of Tarzan
    The Return of Tarzan is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the second in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published in the pulp magazine New Story Magazine in the issues for June through December 1913; the first book edition was published in 1915 by A. C....

     (1913) (Ebook) (Audiobook)
  3. The Beasts of Tarzan
    The Beasts of Tarzan
    The Beasts of Tarzan is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the third in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. Originally serialized in All-Story Cavalier magazine in 1914, the novel was first published in book form by A. C...

     (1914) (Ebook) (Audiobook)
  4. The Son of Tarzan
    The Son of Tarzan
    The Son of Tarzan is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fourth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was written between January 21 and May 11, 1915, and first published in the magazine All-Story Weekly as a six-part serial from December 4, 1915-January 8, 1916. It...

     (1914) (Ebook) (Audiobook)
  5. Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
    Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
    Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fifth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. It first appeared in the November and December issues of All-Story Cavalier Weekly in 1916, and the first book publication was by McClurg in 1918.-Plot...

     (1916) (Ebook) (Audiobook)
  6. Jungle Tales of Tarzan
    Jungle Tales of Tarzan
    Jungle Tales of Tarzan is a collection of twelve loosely-connected short stories written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, comprising the sixth book in order of publication in his series about the title character Tarzan...

     (1919) (Ebook) (Audiobook)
    • "Tarzan's First Love" (1916)
    • "The Capture of Tarzan" (1916)
    • "The Fight for the Balu" (1916)
    • "The God of Tarzan" (1916)
    • "Tarzan and the Black Boy" (1917)
    • "The Witch-Doctor Seeks Vengeance" (1917)
    • "The End of Bukawai" (1917)
    • "The Lion" (1917)
    • "The Nightmare" (1917)
    • "The Battle for Teeka" (1917)
    • "A Jungle Joke" (1917)
    • "Tarzan Rescues the Moon" (1917)
  7. Tarzan the Untamed
    Tarzan the Untamed
    Tarzan the Untamed is a book written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the seventh in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was originally published as two separate stories serialized in different pulp magazines; "Tarzan the Untamed" in Redbook from March to August, 1919, and "Tarzan and...

     (1920) (Ebook)
    • "Tarzan and the Huns" (1919)
    • "Tarzan and the Valley of Luna" (1920)
  8. Tarzan the Terrible
    Tarzan the Terrible
    Tarzan the Terrible is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the eighth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published as a serial in the pulp magazine Argosy All-Story Weekly in the issues for February 12, 19, and 26 and March 5, 12, 19, and 26, 1921; the first...

     (1921) (Ebook)
  9. Tarzan and the Golden Lion
    Tarzan and the Golden Lion
    Tarzan and the Golden Lion is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the ninth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published as a seven part serial in Argosy All-Story Weekly beginning in December 1922; and then as a complete novel by A.C. McClurg & Co...

     (1922, 1923) (Ebook)
  10. Tarzan and the Ant Men
    Tarzan and the Ant Men
    Tarzan and the Ant Men is the tenth book in Edgar Rice Burroughs' series of novels about the jungle hero Tarzan. It was first published as a seven-part serial in the magazine Argosy All-Story Weekly for February 2, 9, 16, and 23 and March 1, 8, and 15, 1924. It was first published in book form in...

     (1924) (Ebook)
  11. Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
    Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (novel)
    Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, generally considered the eleventh in his series of books about the title character Tarzan...

     (1927, 1928) (Ebook)
  12. Tarzan and the Lost Empire
    Tarzan and the Lost Empire
    Tarzan and the Lost Empire is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the twelfth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published as a serial in Blue Book Magazine from October 1928 through February 1929; it first appeared in book form in a hardcover edition from...

     (1928) (Ebook)
  13. Tarzan at the Earth's Core
    Tarzan at the Earth's Core
    Tarzan at the Earth's Core is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, simultaneously the thirteenth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan and the fourth in his series set in the interior world of Pellucidar.-Plot summary:...

     (1929) (Ebook)
  14. Tarzan the Invincible
    Tarzan the Invincible
    Tarzan the Invincible is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fourteenth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. The novel was originally serialized in the magazine Blue Book from October, 1930 through April, 1931 as "Tarzan, Guard of the Jungle."-Plot summary:Tarzan, his...

     (1930, 1931) (Ebook)
  15. Tarzan Triumphant
    Tarzan Triumphant
    Tarzan Triumphant is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fifteenth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. The novel was originally serialized in the magazine Blue Book from October, 1931 through March, 1932...

     (1931) (Ebook)
  16. Tarzan and the City of Gold
    Tarzan and the City of Gold
    Tarzan and the City of Gold is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the sixteenth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan...

     (1932) (Ebook)
  17. Tarzan and the Lion Man
    Tarzan and the Lion Man
    Tarzan and the Lion Man is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the seventeenth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan...

     (1933, 1934) (Ebook)
  18. Tarzan and the Leopard Men
    Tarzan and the Leopard Men
    Tarzan and the Leopard Men is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the eighteenth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan...

     (1935) (Ebook)
  19. Tarzan's Quest
    Tarzan's Quest
    Tarzan's Quest is a 1936 novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the nineteenth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan.-Plot:...

     (1935, 1936) (Ebook)
  20. Tarzan and the Forbidden City
    Tarzan and the Forbidden City
    Tarzan and the Forbidden City is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the twentieth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan.-Plot summary:...

     (1938) (Ebook)
  21. Tarzan the Magnificent
    Tarzan the Magnificent (novel)
    Tarzan the Magnificent is a book written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the twenty-first in his series of books about the title character Tarzan...

     (1939) (Ebook)
    • "Tarzan and the Magic Men" (1936)
    • "Tarzan and the Elephant Men" (1937–1938)
  22. Tarzan and the Foreign Legion
    Tarzan and the Foreign Legion
    Tarzan and the Foreign Legion is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the twenty-second in his series of books about the title character Tarzan...

     (1947) (Ebook)
  23. Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins
    Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins
    Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins is a collection of two Tarzan novellas written by Edgar Rice Burroughs for younger readers. It was originally published as two children's books, The Tarzan Twins by Voland in October 1927, and Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins, with Jad-bal-ja, the Golden Lion, by Whitman in...

     (1963, for younger readers)
    • "The Tarzan Twins" (1927) (Ebook)
    • "Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins and Jad-Bal-Ja the Golden Lion" (1936) (Ebook)
  24. Tarzan and the Madman
    Tarzan and the Madman
    Tarzan and the Madman is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the twenty-third in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. Written from January-February, 1940, the story was never published in Burroughs' lifetime...

     (1964)
  25. Tarzan and the Castaways
    Tarzan and the Castaways
    Tarzan and the Castaways is a collection of stories written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the twenty-fourth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. In addition to the title novella, it includes two Tarzan short stories. Of the three pieces, "Tarzan and the Jungle Murders" was written...

     (1965)
    • "Tarzan and the Castaways" (1941) (Ebook)
    • "Tarzan and the Champion" (1940)
    • "Tarzan and the Jungle Murders" (1940)
  26. Tarzan: the Lost Adventure
    Tarzan: the Lost Adventure
    Tarzan: the Lost Adventure is a novel written by Joe R. Lansdale based on an incomplete fragment of a Tarzan novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs but left unfinished at his death...

     (with Joe R. Lansdale
    Joe R. Lansdale
    Joe R. Lansdale is an American author and martial-arts expert. He has written novels and stories in many genres, including Western, horror, science fiction, mystery, and suspense...

    ) (1995)

By other authors

  • Barton Werper – these novels were never authorized by the Burroughs estate, were taken off the market and remaining copies destroyed.
    1. Tarzan and the Silver Globe (1964)
    2. Tarzan and the Cave City (1964)
    3. Tarzan and the Snake People (1964)
    4. Tarzan and the Abominable Snowmen (1965)
    5. Tarzan and the Winged Invaders (1965)

  • Fritz Leiber
    Fritz Leiber
    Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theatre and films, playwright, expert chess player and a champion fencer. Possibly his greatest chess accomplishment was winning clear first in the 1958 Santa Monica Open.. With...

     – the first novel authorized by the Burroughs estate, and numbered as the 25th book in the Tarzan series.
    • Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966)

  • Philip José Farmer
    Philip José Farmer
    Philip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories....

    • A character based on Tarzan (Lord Grandrith) appears in the Nine trilogy:
      • A Feast Unknown
        A Feast Unknown
        A Feast Unknown is a novel written by American author Philip José Farmer. The novel is a pastiche of pulp fiction, erotica, and horror fiction...

         (circa 1969)
      • Lord of the Trees
        Lord of the Trees
        Lord of the Trees is an American novel by Philip José Farmer. Originally released in 1970, it was one of two intertwining sequels to Farmer's previous A Feast Unknown, along with The Mad Goblin...

         (circa 1970)
      • The Mad Goblin
        The Mad Goblin
        The Mad Goblin is an American novel by Philip José Farmer. Originally released in 1970, it was one of two intertwining sequels to Farmer's previous A Feast Unknown, along with Lord of the Trees...

         (circa 1970)
    • Tarzan Alive (1972) a fictional biography of Tarzan (here Lord Greystoke), which is one of the two foundational books (along with Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life
      Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life
      Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life is a fictional biography by Philip José Farmer about pulp fiction hero Doc Savage.The book is written with the assumption that Doc Savage was a real person. Kenneth Robeson, the author of the Doc Savage novels, is portrayed as writing fictionalized memoirs of the...

      ) of the Wold Newton family
      Wold Newton family
      The Wold Newton family is a literary concept derived from a form of crossover fiction developed by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer...

      .
    • Time's Last Gift (1972) this unauthorized novel explains how Tarzan (specified by inference, but not specifically named as such) can be in Ancient Opar (see below)
    • The Adventure of the Peerless Peer (1974)
    • The Opar novels – authorized by the Burroughs estate. A secondary character of the Opar novels—while not specifically named as "Tarzan"—was intended to be Tarzan by Farmer, and is included as such by most Wold Newton family
      Wold Newton family
      The Wold Newton family is a literary concept derived from a form of crossover fiction developed by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer...

       scholars.
      • Hadon of Ancient Opar
        Hadon of Ancient Opar
        Hadon of Ancient Opar is a fantasy novel by Philip José Farmer, first published in paperback by DAW Books in April 1974, and reprinted three times through 1993. The first British edition was published by Magnum in 1977...

         (1974)
      • Flight to Opar
        Flight to Opar
        Flight to Opar is a fantasy novel by Philip José Farmer, first published in paperback by DAW Books in June 1976, and reprinted twice through 1983. The first British edition was published by Magnum in 1977....

         (1976)
    • The Dark Heart of Time
      The Dark Heart of Time
      The Dark Heart of Time: a Tarzan novel is a 1999 work by Philip José Farmer authorized by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. The book was first announced under the title Tarzan's Greatest Secret in 1997....

       (1999) this novel was specifically authorized by the Burroughs estate, and references Tarzan by name rather than just by inference.
Farmer also wrote a novel based on his own fascination with Tarzan, entitled Lord Tyger
Lord Tyger
Lord Tyger is an American novel by Philip José Farmer. Originally released in 1970, the book is a metafictional pastiche of one of Farmer's favorite subjects, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan.-Plot summary:...

, and translated the novel Tarzan of the Apes into Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

.

  • R. A. Salvatore
    • Tarzan: The Epic Adventures
      Tarzan: The Epic Adventures
      Tarzan: The Epic Adventures is a syndicated series that aired for one season . It focuses on the character of Tarzan in his early years, after his first exposure to civilization, but before his marriage to Jane Porter...

       (1996) an authorized novel based on the pilot episode of the series of the same name.

  • Nigel Cox
    • Tarzan Presley (2004) This novel combines aspects of Tarzan and Elvis Presley
      Elvis Presley
      Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

       into a single character named Tarzan Presley, within New Zealand
      New Zealand
      New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

       and American
      United States
      The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

       settings. Upon its release, it was subject to legal action in the United States
      United States
      The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

      , and has not been reprinted since its initial publication.

See also

  • Feral children in mythology and fiction
    Feral children in mythology and fiction
    Feral children, children who have lived from a young age without human contact, appear in mythological and fictional works, usually as human characters who have been raised by animals...

  • George of the Jungle
    George of the Jungle
    George of the Jungle was an American animated series produced by Jay Ward and Bill Scott, who created The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The character George was inspired by the legend of Tarzan. It ran for 17 episodes on Saturday mornings from September 9 to December 30, 1967, on the American TV...

    , animated TV-series and film
  • Gitarzan
    Gitarzan
    "Gitarzan" is a novelty song released by Ray Stevens in 1969, about a character who lives in a jungle and forms a musical band with his female partner, Jane, and their pet monkey. The song features Tarzan Yells, scat singing, and a funky Boogie Woogie, as well as a quote from the song "Swinging on...

    , a song
  • Ka-Zar
    Ka-Zar
    Ka-Zar is the name of two jungle-dwelling comics fictional characters published in the United States. The first appeared in pulp magazines of the 1930s, and was adapted for his second iteration, as a comic book character for Timely Comics, the 1930s and 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics...

  • Kimbar of the Jungle a 1949 television pilot
    Television pilot
    A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...

     starring Steve Reeves
    Steve Reeves
    Stephen L. Reeves was an American bodybuilder and actor. At the peak of his career, he was the highest-paid actor in Europe.-Childhood:...

  • Kreegah bundolo, Beware, I kill
  • Mangani
    Mangani
    Mangani is the name of a fictional species of great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and of the invented language used by these apes. In the invented language, Mangani is the apes' word for their own kind, although the term is also applied to humans...

    , the great apes
  • Mowgli
    Mowgli
    Mowgli is a fictional character from India who originally appeared in Rudyard Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" and then went on to become the most prominent and memorable character in his fantasies, The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book , which also featured stories about other...

    , from Kipling's Jungle Book
  • Muviro
    Muviro
    Muviro, chief of the Waziri, is a character in the Tarzan saga created by Edgar Rice Burroughs.-Character:Muviro is depicted as a somewhat elderly warrior of the Wazari, wise, brave and respected, and a good friend of Tarzan. He serves as the sub-chief of the tribe under Tarzan...

    , sub-chief of the Waziri
  • Tarzan Boy
    Tarzan Boy
    "Tarzan Boy" is the title of a song recorded by Italy-based act Baltimora. It was the group's debut single, released in April 1985, from its first album Living in the Background, on which it features as first track...

    , Italo Disco song
  • Tarzan yell
    Tarzan yell
    The Tarzan yell is the distinctive, ululating yell of the character Tarzan, as portrayed by actor Johnny Weissmuller in the films based on the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, starting with Tarzan the Ape Man...

    , "the victory cry of the bull ape" in movies
  • Tarzana, Los Angeles, named by Burroughs
  • Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle
    Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle
    Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle is a 1975 adult-oriented French/Belgian animated film directed by cartoonist Picha and Boris Szulzinger. The film was the first foreign-animated film to receive both an X rating and wide distribution in the United States....

    , adult-oriented animated film
  • Waziri (fictional tribe)
    Waziri (fictional tribe)
    Waziri is the name of a fictional African tribe created by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Tarzan books.In The Return of Tarzan Tarzan returns from civilization to his beloved jungle. But he has changed: when he meets a black warrior, instead of killing him he saves him from Numa, the lion. The warrior...

    , Tarzan's tribe
  • Zembla
    Zembla (character)
    Zembla is a French comic book character created by Augusto Pedrazza and Franco Oneta for French publisher Editions Lug in 1963.-History:Zembla was created at the initiative of editor-in-chief Marcel Navarro to compete with the highly successful pseudo-Tarzan, Akim, published by Lug's competitor,...

    , French comic book character
  • Tirezan of the Apehangers, a strip form 'Car-Toons' magazine in the 1960s with art by Alex Toth
    Alex Toth
    Alexander Toth was an American professional cartoonist active from the 1940s through the 1980s. Toth's work began in the American comic book industry, but is known for his animation designs for Hanna-Barbera throughout the 1960s and 1970s. His work included Super Friends, Space Ghost, The...

    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QMuDihPPyPA/Rm7ro9oZ5eI/AAAAAAAABpM/4bo6JSuOTBM/s1600/blog_toth.jpg.

External links




  • Catalogue of all the UK 1st editions by Burroughs - https://sites.google.com/site/erburroughsuk1steditions/
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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