Tarzan of the apes - Hardcover

Hogarth, Burne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0600386899 ISBN 13: 9780600386896

Publisher: Hamlyn, 1973

Synopsis

1888 W Africa. Newlyweds Lord and Lady Greystoke are marooned by mutineers. He builds a snug cabin for their growing family.But disaster falls. Great Apes raise the small son, destined to be 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hamlyn
• Publication date: 1973
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0600386899
• ISBN 13: 9780600386896
• Binding: Hardcover