Tarzan (book series)

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Tarzan of the Apes in color.jpg
Author Edgar Rice Burroughs
Country United States
Language English
Genre adventure
Publisher A. C. McClurg
Media type Print (hardback)

Tarzan is a series of twenty-four adventure novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, followed by several novels either co-written by Burroughs, or officially authorized by his estate. There are also two works written by Burroughs especially for children that are not considered part of the main series.

The series is considered a classic of literature and is the author's best-known work. Tarzan has been called one of the best-known literary characters in the world. Written by Burroughs between 1912 and 1965, Tarzan has been adapted many times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage, and cinema. (It has been adapted for the cinema more times than any book except Dracula).

Even though the copyright on Tarzan of the Apes has expired in the United States, the name Tarzan is still protected as a trademark of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Also, the work remains under copyright in some other countries where copyright terms are longer.


The twenty four main books[edit]

Tarzan of the Apes (1912)[edit]

Main article: Tarzan of the Apes







The Return of Tarzan (1913)[edit]

Main article: The Return of Tarzan





The Beasts of Tarzan (1914)[edit]

Main article: The Beasts of Tarzan

Not long after Tarzan claims his hereditary title of Lord Greystoke and marries Jane, their infant son, Jack, is kidnapped in London by his old Russian enemies, Nikolas Rokoff and Alexis Paulvitch. Following an anonymous call about the whereabouts of Jack, Tarzan himself falls into Rokoff's trap and is imprisoned aboard a ship carrying Jack. Jane, fearing Tarzan was entering a trap, follows him and also finds herself in Rokoff's clutches aboard the boat. Rokoff sets sail to Africa, eventually exiling Tarzan on an island near the African coast and telling Tarzan that Jack will be left with a cannibal tribe and raised as one of their own.

Using his jungle skill and primal intelligence, Tarzan wins the help of Sheeta, the vicious panther, a tribe of great apes led by the intelligent Akut, and the native warrior Mugambi. With their aid, Tarzan reaches the mainland, kills Rokoff, and tracks down his wife and son. Paulvitch, the other villain, is presumed dead, but manages to escape into the jungle.

The Son of Tarzan (1914)[edit]

Main article: The Son of Tarzan

Alexis Paulvitch, a henchman of Tarzan's now-deceased enemy, Nikolas Rokoff, survived his encounter with the ape-man in The Beasts of Tarzan and wants to even the score. Paulvitch lures Jack, Tarzan's son, away from London and into his clutches, but Jack escapes with the help of the ape named Akut. Akut & Jack flee into the deep African jungle where two decades earlier Tarzan himself had been raised. The young Jack Clayton, now on his own, becomes known as Korak the killer and builds a reputation for himself in the Jungle. Korak, like his father before him, finds his own place in the Jungle among the great apes, and also like his father, meets and rescues a beautiful young woman, Meriem. Meriem is the daughter of a Captain in the French Foreign Legion, who was also a Prince (Prince de Cadrenet), named Armand Jacot. Arguably, the book is as much about Meriem, wife of Korak, as it is about Tarzan's son.

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (1916)[edit]

In the previous novel Tarzan and Jane's son, Jack Clayton, a.k.a. Korak, had come into his own. In this novel Tarzan returns to Opar, the source of the gold where a lost colony of fabled Atlantis is located. However, while Atlantis itself sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago, the workers of Opar have continued to mine all of the gold, which means there is a rather huge stockpile. Tarzan follows a greedy Belgian and an Arab into the jungle, where this criminal pair manages to stumble upon this lost city. John Clayton loses his memory as an after effect of an earthquake, and La, the high priestess who was the servant of the Flaming god of Opar, and who is also very beautiful, takes advantage of his amnesia. She had fallen in lust with the ape man during their first encounter. But while his amnesia opens the door for La's lustful advances, her high priests are not going to allow Tarzan to escape their sacrificial knives this time. In the meanwhile, Jane is in trouble and wonders what is keeping her husband from once again coming to her rescue.

Jungle Tales of Tarzan (1919)[edit]

Collection of twelve loosely-connected short stories.

  1. "Tarzan's First Love"
  2. "The Capture of Tarzan"
  3. "The Fight for the Balu"
  4. "The God of Tarzan"
  5. "Tarzan and the Black Boy"
  6. "The Witch-Doctor Seeks Vengeance"
  7. "The End of Bukawai"
  8. "The Lion"
  9. "The Nightmare"
  10. "The Battle for Teeka"
  11. "A Jungle Joke"
  12. "Tarzan Rescues the Moon"

Tarzan the Untamed (1920)[edit]

Main article: Tarzan the Untamed

The action is set during World War I. While John Clayton, Lord Greystoke (Tarzan) is away from his plantation home in British East Africa, it is destroyed by invading German troops from Tanganyika. On his return he discovers among many burned bodies one that appears to be the corpse of his wife, Jane Porter Clayton. Another fatality is the Waziri warrior Wasimbu, left crucified by the Germans. (Wasimbu's father Muviro, first mentioned in this story, goes on to play a prominent role in later Tarzan novels.)

Maddened, the ape-man seeks revenge not only on the perpetrators of the tragedy but all Germans, and sets out for the battle front of the war in east Africa. On the way he has a run-in with a lion (or Numa, as it is called by the apes among whom Tarzan was raised), which he traps in a gulch by blocking the entrance. At the front he infiltrates the German headquarters and seizes Major Schneider, the officer he believes led the raid on his estate. Returning to the gulch, he throws his captive to the lion. Tarzan goes on to help the British in the battle in various ways, including setting the lion loose in the enemy trenches, and kills von Goss, another German officer involved in the attack on the Greystoke estate.

He then becomes embroiled in the affairs of Bertha Kircher, a woman he has seen in both the German and British camps, and believes to be a German spy, particularly after he learns she possesses his mother's locket, which he had given as a gift to Jane. His efforts to retrieve it lead him to a rendezvous between Kircher and Captain Fritz Schneider, brother of the major Tarzan threw to the lion previously, and the actual commander of the force that burned the estate. Killing Schneider, Tarzan believes his vengeance complete. Abandoning his vendetta against the Germans he departs for the jungle, swearing off all company with mankind.

Seeking a band of Mangani, the apes among whom he had been raised, Tarzan crosses a desert, undergoing great privations. Indeed, the desert is almost his undoing. He only survives by feigning death to lure a vulture (Ska in the ape language) following him into his reach; he then catches and devours the vulture, which gives him the strength to go on. The scene is a powerful one, a highlight both of the novel and of the Tarzan series as a whole.

On the other side of the desert Tarzan locates the ape band. While with them he once again encounters Bertha Kircher, who has just escaped from Sergeant Usanga, leader a troop of native deserters from the German army, by whom she had been taken captive. Despite his suspicion of Bertha, Tarzan's natural chivalry leads him to grant her shelter and protection among the apes. Later he himself falls captive to the tribe of cannibals the deserters have sheltered among, along with Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick, a British aviator who has been forced down in the jungle. Learning of Tarzan's plight, Bertha heroically leads the apes against the natives and frees them both.

Smith-Oldwick becomes infatuated with Bertha, and they search for his downed plane. They find it, but are captured again by Usanga, who attempts to fly off in it with Bertha. Tarzan arrives in time to board the plane as it takes off and throw Usanga from the plane. Smith-Oldwick and Bertha Kircher then try to pilot it back across the desert to civilization, but fail to make it. Seeing the plane go down, Tarzan once more sets out to rescue them. On the way he encounters another Numa, this one an unusual black lion caught in a pit trap, and frees it.

He, the two lovers and the lion are soon reunited, but attacked by warriors from the lost city of Xuja, hidden in a secret desert valley. Tarzan is left for dead and Bertha and Smith-Oldwick taken prisoner. The Xujans are masters of the local lions and worshippers of parrots and monkeys. They are also completely insane as a consequence of long inbreeding. Recovering, Tarzan once more comes to the rescue of his companions, aided by the lion he had saved earlier. But the Xujans pursue them and they turn at bay to make one last stand. The day is saved by a search party from Smith-Oldwick's unit, who turn the tide.

Afterward, Tarzan and Smith-Oldwick find out that Bertha is a double agent who has actually been working for the British. Tarzan also learns from the diary of the deceased Fritz Schneider that Jane might still be alive.

Tarzan the Terrible (1921)[edit]

Main article: Tarzan the Terrible





Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1922/23)[edit]

In the previous novel, Tarzan rescued Jane after he discovered that she was alive, and was reunited with his son Korak. In this story he and his family encounter and adopt an orphaned lion cub, whom they name Jad-bal-ja ("The Golden Lion" in the language of the lost land of Pal-ul-don, which they have recently left). They then return to their African estate, gutted by the Germans during the course of World War I in Tarzan the Untamed. They find it already being rebuilt by Tarzan's faithful Waziri warriors, including old Muviro, who first appears in this novel after a previous mention in Tarzan the Untamed. Muviro reappears in a number of later novels as sub-chief of the Waziri. Back at home, Tarzan raises Jad-bal-ja, who in adulthood is a magnificent black-maned golden lion devoted to the Ape Man.

Later Tarzan is drugged and delivered to the priests of Opar, the lost colony of Atlantis that he had last visited in Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. Once again La, the High Priestess of the Flaming God, who is consumed by her hopeless infatuation with Tarzan, rescues him. But when her people discover that she had betrayed them, she flees with Tarzan into the legendary Valley of Diamonds, where savage gorillas rule. The good news is that Tarzan and La are followed by the faithful Jad-bal-ja. The bad news is that they are also being trailed by Esteban Miranda, who happens to look exactly like Tarzan, who hopes to locate and loot Opar.

Tarzan and the Ant Men (1924)[edit]

Tarzan, the king of the jungle, enters an isolated country called Minuni, inhabited by a people four times smaller than himself. The Minunians live in magnificent city-states which frequently wage war against each other. Tarzan befriends the king, Adendrohahkis, and the prince, Komodoflorensal, of one such city-state, called Trohanadalmakus, and joins them in war against the onslaught of the army of Veltopismakus, their warlike neighbours. Tarzan is captured on the battle-ground and taken prisoner by the Veltopismakusians. The Veltopismakusian scientist Zoanthrohago conducts an experiment reducing Tarzan to the size of a Minunian, and the ape-man is imprisoned and enslaved among other Trohanadalmakusian prisoners of war. He meets, though, Komodoflorensal in the dungeons of Veltopismakus, and together they are able to make a daring escape.

Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (1927/28)[edit]

Tarzan finds an outpost of European knights and crusaders from a "forbidden valley" hidden in the mountains.

Tarzan and the Lost Empire (1928)[edit]


Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929)[edit]



As Tarzan and the others prepare to return home, Gridley decides to stay to search for Frederich Wilhelm Eric von Mendeldorf und von Horst, one last member of the expedition who remains lost (The missing Von Horst's adventures are told in a sequel, Back to the Stone Age, which in the event does not involve either Gridley or Tarzan).

Tarzan the Invincible (1930/31)[edit]

Main article: Tarzan the Invincible


Tarzan Triumphant (1931)[edit]

Main article: Tarzan Triumphant


Tarzan and the City of Gold (1932)[edit]

After encountering and befriending Valthor, a warrior of the lost city of Athne (whom he rescues from a group of bandits known as shiftas), the City of Ivory and capital of the land of Thenar, Tarzan is captured by the insane yet beautiful queen Nemone of its hereditary enemy, Cathne, the City of Gold, capital of the land of Onthar. This novel is perhaps best known for two scenes; in the first, Tarzan is forced to fight Cathne's strongest man in its arena. While an ordinary man might have been in trouble, Tarzan easily overpowers his antagonist. The second scene, in which Tarzan is forced to fight a lion, starts with the ape man being forced to run away from a hunting lion, Belthar, which will hunt him down and kill him. Tarzan at first believes he can outrun the beast (lions tire after the first 100 yards at top speed). This lion, however, is of a breed specifically selected for endurance, and ultimately Tarzan must turn to face him, though aware that without a knife he can do little but delay the inevitable. Fortunately his own lion ally, Jad-bal-ja, whom he had raised from a cub, arrives and intervenes, killing Belthar and saving Tarzan. Nemone, who believes her life is linked to that of her pet, kills herself when it dies.

Unusually for lost cities in the Tarzan series, which are typically visited but once, Cathne and Athne reappear in a later Tarzan adventure, Tarzan the Magnificent. (The only other lost city Tarzan visits more than once is Opar.)

Tarzan and the Lion Man (1933/34)[edit]


Tarzan and the Leopard Men (1935)[edit]


Tarzan's Quest (1935/36)[edit]

Main article: Tarzan's Quest

Tarzan's wife Jane, in her first appearance in the series since Tarzan and the Ant Men, becomes involved in a search for a bloodthirsty lost tribe reputed to possess an immortality drug. Also drawn in are Tarzan and his monkey companion, little Nkima, and Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors, who are searching for Muviro's lost daughter Buira. Nkima's vital contribution to the adventure is recognized when he is made a recipient of the treatment along with the human protagonists at the end of the novel.

Tarzan and the Forbidden City (1938)[edit]


Tarzan the Magnificent (1939)[edit]


Tarzan and the Foreign Legion (1947)[edit]

While serving in the R.A.F. under his civilian name of John Clayton during World War II, Tarzan is shot down over the island of Sumatra in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies. He uses his jungle survival skills to save his comrades in arms, and fight the Japanese while seeking escape from enemy territory.

Tarzan and the Madman (1964)[edit]

Main article: Tarzan and the Madman


Tarzan and the Castaways (1965)[edit]

Collection of three unconnected short stories.

  1. "Tarzan and the Castaways" (originally entitled "The Quest of Tarzan")
  2. "Tarzan and the Champion"
  3. "Tarzan and the Jungle Murders"

Other official works[edit]

The Eternal Lover and The Mad King (1914–15, 1925, 1926)[edit]

Originally written as a series of four novellas, they were first published as novels in 1925 and 1926.

Main article: The Eternal Lover

The Eternal Lover recounts a sister and brother visiting the Greystoke estate in Africa before the first World War. While there, the sister falls unconscious, and remembers her adventures from a past life thousands of years ago. Tarzan makes occasional appearances as their present day host.

Main article: The Mad King

The first half of The Mad King is set before the African visit, and focuses on the brother, finding out that they are related to the royalty of a small kingdom between Austria and Serbia. The second half is set after the African visit as the brother returns to the European kingdom on the eve of World War I. Tarzan does not appear in these two stories, although the sister from Eternal Lover does.

The Adventures of Tarzan (1921, 2006)[edit]

A licensed novelization serialized in 15 parts by newspapers in 1921. This work by Maude Robinson Toombs is based on the scripts for the 15-part film-serial of the same name, and was first released as a collected edition in 2006.

Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins (1927/1936)[edit]

Originally written as a pair of novellas specifically for younger readers, the two stories; "The Tarzan Twins" and "Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins, with Jad-bal-ja, the Golden Lion" were published together in 1963. While the fact that they were written for children usually excludes them from lists of the main Tarzan novels, the family in the stories does make an appearance in Tarzan and the Lost Empire (1929).

Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966)[edit]

Authorized by the Burroughs estate as the 25th official novel, this work by Fritz Leiber is based on the screenplay for the film of the same name. The book includes footnotes connecting the story to events from Burroughs' twenty-four prior novels.

Endless Quest Books[edit]

In the 1980s, TSR, Inc. published two Tarzan books as part of their Endless Quest gamebook series.

Tarzan: the Lost Adventure (1995)[edit]

Eighty typed pages for an unfinished Tarzan novel were found in Burroughs' safe after his death. In the mid-1990s the Burroughs estate and Dark Horse Comics chose Joe R. Lansdale to complete the novel which was released as a co-authored work in 1995.

Tarzan: The Epic Adventures (1996)[edit]

The pilot episode of the 1996–1997 television series Tarzan: The Epic Adventures was adapted into an authorized 1996 novel by R. A. Salvatore. The book is nominally set during the middle of The Return of Tarzan as it chronicles a time after Tarzan returned to Africa from Paris, but before he married Jane.

The Dark Heart of Time (1999)[edit]

Following The Lost Adventure the Burroughs estate authorized Philip Jose Farmer to write an official Tarzan novel, released in 1999 as The Dark Heart of Time.

Best known for his Riverworld series, Philip Jose Farmer has also written a number of Tarzan based pastiche works. He also authored Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke (1972/2006), and two authorized Opar novels set thousands of years in the past: Hadon of Ancient Opar (1974) and Flight to Opar (1976).

Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy (2011)[edit]

Author Andy Briggs has rebooted the series[1] as young-adult fiction, in the vein of Young Bond, with the first novel—Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy—published in June 2011.[2][3] The reboot is set in modern Africa and features Tarzan at around 18 and Jane as the teenage daughter of doctor turned illegal logger.[4][5]

Tarzan: The Jungle Warrior (2012)[edit]

Andy Briggs's second book in the young adult reboot.

"Tarzan: The Savage Lands" (2013)[edit]

Andy Briggs also released the third book on February 7, 2013.

"Tarzan: Return to Pal-ul-don" (2015)[edit]

Author Will Murray's authorized sequel to Tarzan the Terrible [6]

Critical reception[edit]



Tarzan walking, in this display from an Ankara amusement park.

Since the beginning of the 1970s, Tarzan books and movies have often been criticized as being blatantly racist. The early books often give a negative and stereotypical portrayal of native Africans, both Arab and Black. In The Return of Tarzan, Arabs are "surly looking" and say things like "dog of a Christian," while blacks are "lithe, ebon warriors, gesticulating and jabbering." It is worth remembering that he is not the best of writers, other than imaginatively. He used every ploy for the purpose of painting his antagonists in simple unflattering colors. While he used racial stereotype of black people, he also has black characters that are great, good hearted, generous, intelligent, in short, anything a person could ask for. At the end of Tarzan And The Jewels Of Opar (1918), the fifth book in the twenty-four book series, Burroughs writes, “Lord and Lady Greystoke with Basuli and Mugambi rode together at the head of the column, laughing and talking together in that easy familiarity which common interests and mutual respect breed between honest and intelligent men of any races.” Burroughs explains somewhat Tarzan’s attitudes toward people in general in Tarzan And The City Of Gold (1933), where he writes, “Ordinarily, Tarzan was no more concerned by the fate of a white man than by that of a black man or any other created thing to which he was not bound by ties of friendship; the life of a man meant less to Tarzan of the Apes than the life of an ape.”




Also, some defenders of the Tarzan series argue that some of the words Burroughs uses to describe Africans, such as "savage," were generally understood to have a different and less offensive meaning in the early 20th century than they do today.

Unauthorized works[edit]






See also[edit]



  • Peter Bräunlein: Ein weißer Mann in Afrika. Rassismus und Geschlechterverhältnisse in Tarzanfilmen. In: iz3w, Issue No. 280, October 2004, pp. 41–43.
  • Allen Carey-Webb: "Heart of Darkness, Tarzan, and the 'Third World'. Canons and Encounters in World Literature, English 109." College Literature 19 (1992), 121-41.
  • Eric Cheyfitz: The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  • Erling B. Holtsmark: Tarzan and Tradition: Classical Myth in Popular Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.
  • Walt Morton: "Tracking the Sign of Tarzan: Trans-Media Representation of a Pop-Culture Iocn." In: You Tarzan: Masculinity, Movies and Men. Ed. Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumin. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
  • Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike: Black African Cinema. University of California Press 1994. pp. 40–52.
  • Richard J. Utz (ed.): Investigating the Unliterary: Six Readings of 'Tarzan of the Apes'. Regensburg: Martzinek, 1995.

External links[edit]