Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Canonical Tarzan, complete collection of first edition Tarzan novels.

• Sold as a set of 27 volumes.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs (American).
• Various publishers, 1914-1965.
• First edition run of all 24 novels in the Tarzan series, including Tarzan Of The Apes in the rare original dust jacket and five inscribed books — along with Burroughs's rare 1917 autobiography and two further Tarzan titles.
• Five inscribed books: Beasts, Son, Golden Lion, Invincible, and Leopard Men
• Additional first editions outside the Tarzan novels: An Auto-Biography (1917); Tarzan And The Tarzan Twins (1963); and Official Guide Of The Tarzan Clans Of America (1939).
• Original cloth bindings, all in original dust jackets except Return, Beasts, and Son.
• Earth's Core in a later Grosset & Dunlap jacket.
• Tarzan Of The Apes in rarest state, per Currey: title page cancel, W.F. Hall imprint in Gothic lettering, binding without acorn.
• A full inventory is available upon request.

"I have been astonished to discover how often a leading biochemist or archaeologist or space technician or astronaut when asked: what happened to you when you were ten years old? replied: 'Tarzan.'" — Ray Bradbury

Tarzan is one of the most recognizable pop cultural icons of the 20th century. Beginning with the novels, but quickly translating to film and beyond, Tarzan soon had his own merchandise, piracies, and international adaptations (including Bollywood films and Japanese manga). Tarzan's relationship with the movies — beginning in 1918, during the early years of popular film — was especially rich. One producer of Tarzan films, Sol Lesser, described Tarzan's global market saturation with only slight hyperbole that "there is always a Tarzan picture playing within a radius of 50 miles of any given spot in the world — in Arab villages, African bush theatres and in pampas settlements down the Argentine way" (quoted in Abate & Wannamaker, 3). But Tarzan enjoyed many revivals in print as well; in 1963 "one out of every thirty paperbacks sold was a Tarzan novel" (Torgovnick, 42). For over 100 years, Tarzan has remained a vivid figure in our popular imagination.

Tarzan's world is not all boyhood innocence: it also "embodies a powerful emblem of past white Western imperialism and, correspondingly, of the present colonialization of the world by American culture" (Abate & Wannamaker, 5). But alongside this, Tarzan has remained internationally beloved as a potent mix of the Rousseauian "noble savage" and the Swiftian "stranger in a strange land," — a mythic figure like Romulus and Remus (one of Burroughs's inspirations) or Robinson Crusoe (also an early literary phenomenon). Above all, the books were fun: as Ray Bradbury recollected, "we may have liked Verne and Wells and Kipling, but we loved, we adored, we went quite mad with Mr. Burroughs" (intro to Porges, xviii).

This complete collection of the Tarzan novels features one of the rarest and most sought after books in Modern Firsts collecting: a first edition of Tarzan Of The Apes in the original dust jacket. Of the five books inscribed by Burroughs, two are among the earliest in the series: Beasts Of Tarzan (#3) and Son Of Tarzan (#4). In addition to the novels of the main series, this collection includes the scarce early piece of Burroughsiana, a short memoir commissioned by the Republic Motor Truck Company on one of Burroughs's transcontinental journeys; only a few copies were bound in the deluxe suede binding, apparently for the personal use of the author. The final two included books are Tarzan And The Tarzan Twins, which collects two Tarzan novellas for younger children; and The Official Guide Of The Tarzan Clans Of America, published by Burroughs as a manual for organizing and running a Tarzan fan club. Altogether, these books form an exceptionally comprehensive monument to the Tarzan phenomenon.