Tarzan of the Apes - Hardcover

Burroughs, Edgar Rice

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199587035 ISBN 13: 9780199587032

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Tarzan first came swinging through the jungle in the pages of a pulp-fiction magazine in 1912, and subsequently in the novel that went on to spawn numerous film and other adaptations. In its pages we find Tarzan's origins: how he is orphaned after his parents are marooned and killed on the coast of West Africa, and is adopted by an ape-mother. He grows up to become a model of physical strength and natural prowess, and eventually leader of his tribe. When he encounters a group of white Europeans, and rescues Jane Porter from a marauding ape, he finds love, and must choose between the values of the jungle and civilization.

The Tarzan of popular imagination bears only limited resemblance to Edgar Rice Burroughs's creation, and the complex backdrop of colonial appropriation, literary heritage, and nostalgic yearning from which he emerged. This new edition considers these contexts, as well as the enduring appeal of the King of the Apes.

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199587035
• ISBN 13: 9780199587032
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Haslam Jason