Tarzan of the Apes: A Library of America Special Publication - Hardcover

Rice Burroughs, Edgar

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1598531646 ISBN 13: 9781598531640

Publisher: Library of America, 2012

Synopsis

In 1888, in a makeshift cabin at the edge of the West African rainforest, a child is born to Lord and Lady Greystoke, a castaway English diplomat and his young wife. After the doomed couple dies, their infant son is raised by the she-ape Kala, who calls the boy Tarzan—“White-Skin” in the language of her tribe. As Tarzan reaches adulthood, his strength and agility, quickness of mind, and skill with his father’s knife make him the most feared and respected creature in the jungle. But when he encounters others of his kind, including the beautiful Baltimore socialite Jane Porter, he embarks on a far-flung quest for his birthright—the ways of so-called civilized man.

Tarzan first appeared in 1912 in the pages of The All-Story magazine and immediately captured the imaginations of American readers young and old. His later triumphs in Hollywood, in comic strips, and on radio and television made him an international pop culture icon. On the occasion of his centenary, The Library of America invites readers to rediscover Tarzan of the Apes, the pulp classic by Edgar Rice Burroughs that gave the world the once and forever Lord of the Jungle.

About this title

Review:

First published in 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs's romance has lost little of its force over the years--as film revivals and TV series well attest. Tarzan of the Apes is very much a product of its age: replete with bloodthirsty natives and a bulky, swooning American Negress, and haunted by what zoo specialists now call charismatic megafauna (great beasts snarling, roaring, and stalking, most of whom would be out of place in a real African jungle). Burroughs countervails such incorrectness, however, with some rather unattractive representations of white civilization--mutinous, murderous sailors, effete aristos, self-involved academics, and hard-hearted cowards. At Tarzan's heart rightly lies the resourceful and hunky title character, a man increasingly torn between the civil and the savage, for whom cutlery will never be less than a nightmare.

The passages in which the nut-brown boy teaches himself to read and write are masterly and among the book's improbable, imaginative best. How tempting it is to adopt the ten-year-old's term for letters--"little bugs"! And the older Tarzan's realization that civilized "men were indeed more foolish and more cruel than the beasts of the jungle," while not exactly a new notion, is nonetheless potent. The first in Burroughs's serial is most enjoyable in its resounding oddities of word and thought, including the unforgettable "When Tarzan killed he more often smiled than scowled; and smiles are the foundation of beauty."

From the Publisher:

This book is a large print version using a minimum of 16 point type in a 6 by 9 inch size and perfect bound - a paperback. As with all Quiet Vision print books, it use a high grade, acid free paper for long life.

About this edition

• Publisher: Library of America
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1598531646
• ISBN 13: 9781598531640
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432