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TARZAN OF THE APES SERIES - Complete 25 Book Collection (Illustrated): The Return of Tarzan, The Beasts of Tarzan, The Son of Tarzan, Tarzan and the Jewels ... Lion, Tarzan the Terrible and many more
This carefully edited collection of adventure novels has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Table of Contents: Tarzan of the Apes The Return of Tarzan The Beasts of Tarzan The Son of Tarzan Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar Jungle Tales of Tarzan Tarzan the Untamed Tarzan the Terrible Tarzan and the Golden Lion Tarzan and the Ant Men Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle Tarzan and the Lost Empire Tarzan at the Earth's Core Tarzan the Invincible Tarzan Triumphant Tarzan and the City of Gold Tarzan and the Lion Man Tarzan and the Leopard Men Tarzan's Quest Tarzan and the Forbidden City Tarzan the Magnificent Tarzan and the Foreign Legion Tarzan and the Castaways The Tarzan Twins Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-bal-ja the Golden Lion Tarzan or John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke is the son of a British lord and lady who were marooned on the Atlantic coast of Africa by mutineers. When he was only an infant, his mother died, and his father was killed by Kerchak, leader of the ape tribe by whom John was adopted. He gets the ape name Tarzan and he is being raised in the African jungles by the Mangani great apes. Tarzan later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was an American writer best known for his creations of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres. Beside Tarzan's adventures, Burroughs also wrote popular science fiction and fantasy stories involving Earthly adventurers transported to various planets (notably Barsoom, Burroughs's fictional name for Mars, and Amtor, his fictional name for Venus), lost islands, and into the interior of the hollow earth in his Pellucidar stories, as well as westerns and historical romances.
242 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 6, 2013
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About the author
Edgar Rice Burroughs
2,912 books2,739 followersEdgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 5, 2019
The work of Edgar Rice Burroughs should interest and inspire author and reader alike. As a pencil salesman, he sold pencil advertisements in the pulp fiction publications of his day. He found the published stories not very good and thought he’d try his hand at writing. After all, if they were publishing such drivel, why not his drivel. Amazingly, he sold his first piece, which began the John Carter of Mars series. Shortly thereafter, he began what made his fortune and allowed him to name his own town Tarzana after Tarzan of the Apes.
The character of an Englishman of noble birth, raised in the wilds of Africa by great apes captured the imagination of many and deservedly so. Tarzan is one of the seminal fictional characters and has never been depicted as well as Burroughs imagined him.
Raised as an ape, he speaks and understands their language, which is also spoken by monkeys and baboons. His sense of smell is highly developed and he is taught to hunt and kill to eat. When a great ape makes a kill, he lets forth with a terrifying howl of victory that lets the rest of the jungle know. It’s a fearsome sound and nothing like Johnny Weissmuller’s glorious yodel. After killing the great ape that was his stepfather, he sets out on his own and discovers the cabin his real father made after being marooned on the African coast.
Inside the cabin, he discovers the skeletons of his parents as well as his father’s knife, which will serve him through the rest of the series. Also inside the cabin are books that were meant for a boy’s instruction. In a fascinating and ingenious sequence, he teaches himself to read and write English without knowing how the language sounds. After rescuing a French soldier from cannibals, he learns French before English.
Among his enemies are Numa, the Lion, Sheeta, the Panther, Hista, the Snake and cannibals. Enemies are what help define protagonists and through the series, there are enemies galore. There are Germans, Swedes, Russians, Communists, Arabs, Shiftas (bandits) and Japanese who find themselves up against the Ape-Man.
Tarzan is fluent in French and English as well as the language of the beasts and the native African tribes who have learned to fear and respect him. He becomes king of the Waziri and them, his loyal subjects and armed force.
The Johnny Weissmuller films are filled with scenes of Tarzan calling for hordes of jungle beasts to charge white hunters and whatever enemy is on the horizon destroying his jungle paradise. Unlike Weissmuller, Tarzan is quite articulate. In the books, the only scene with an animal charge (other than when Tantor is employed) is when Tarzan persuades a baboon king to send his horde of baboons to attack his enemies. Otherwise, his power over animals is limited. Tantor, the Elephant, is Tarzan’s friend and is happy to carry him on his back to wherever he wishes to go.
However, in The Beasts of Tarzan resides extraordinary sequence, where after becoming the chief of a tribe of great apes and saving a panther from a trap that would otherwise have cost it its life, the beasts join Tarzan in his quest to recapture his bride, Jane. Together with marooned sailors, the apes row a hollowed-out tree to the coast of Africa while Sheeta, the panther drools over the sailors but will not eat them out of loyalty to the Lord of the Jungle. Not so, the fate of Jane’s abductors. Any mention of animal loyalties would be amiss without mentioning the Golden Lion, Jad-bal-ja, whom Tarzan raised from a cub to become his ally and watcher. More than one enemy is vanquished by Tarzan’s loyal avenger, who will not attack any of Tarzan’s friends.
In the first part of Tarzan Returns, he wears clothing, fights off killers in Paris and is hired by the French government to go undercover in North Africa. He’s more like James Bond and quite skilled with a gun in his hand in addition to his superior physical prowess.
One of the major threads that runs through the novels are the lost worlds hidden in the Dark Continent. The first of the worlds is Opar, a city and civilization originally from Atlantis and its queen, La. Opar and La figure in several subsequent novels.
Lost worlds are a throwback to the 19th-century writings of H. Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne. Among the lost worlds Burroughs imagined are two warring Roman cities, warring Crusaders who took a wrong turn returning from the Holy Land, warring civilizations of cat people, warring religious fanatics among many others.
The novels are at their best when focusing on Tarzan and his Waziris, his son, and wife, Jane.
The series lost momentum after shifting focus to lost worlds rather than keeping sharp focus on Tarzan. He even cross-fertilized Tarzan with the Pelucidar series sending the Ape-Man to the Earth’s Core. The stories are at their best when focusing on Tarzan himself. Burroughs created one of the great and most enduring characters of fiction. He revolutionized science fiction and fantasy. He predicted many medical advances and probably inspired discoverers and inventors with his audacious fiction.
One barrier for many modern readers is the language used in 1912. There are many archaic terms and descriptors used, but as the series progresses the language evolves and is less off-putting.
One note on the version I read. The later novels were digitized utilizing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software because there are missing periods and abbreviations that don’t make sense otherwise. The letters “Ms” are in place of where it should have read “his” for example among many other artifacts. The edition I read cost 99 cents for 26 complete novels. Figuring out what the word should have been should be easy enough for the reader and well worth the minor extra effort.
Burroughs pulls the series out of the lost world rut in Tarzan and the Lion Man where he infuses science fiction ideas usually found in the Barsoom series. A mad scientist has created a race crossing gorillas with men. It’s a thrilling entry to the series with brilliant elements of horror in it. That novel was written in 1933-34 with a subplot involving a Hollywood production of a Tarzan-like feature filmed on location in Africa. References to Burroughs’ success in Hollywood continue as characters refer to Lord Greystoke as “a regular Tarzan” not knowing who he really is. Once we reach World War II in Tarzan and the Foreign Legion, Lord Greystoke is a British Army Colonel who reveals his true identity to the band of warriors fighting the Japanese on the island of Sumatra.
No discussion of Burroughs’ Tarzan novels would complete without mentioning the “Tantor” in the room: race. It’s important to keep in mind that Burroughs was a product of his time and his writing reflects what were many prevailing attitudes and ideas of the day. The essential idea of a British nobleman raised by apes only to realize the promise of his superior genes is rightly regarded today as racist. Tarzan hates the black tribes he first meets but one must keep in mind that they were also cannibals. There is liberal use of what is now referred to as the N-Word throughout the books. Tarzan himself doesn’t use the word but many of the white characters do and most of those are Tarzan’s enemies. Throughout the novels, Tarzan is frequently predisposed to help a person because they are white and is callous to the fate of the black tribesmen he encounters.
In Tarzan’s defense, he frequently prefers the law of the jungle to the law of man. He would rather be eaten by a lion or a tiger or gored by a rhinoceros than have the knife of a duplicitous man stab him in the back. The books are replete with wry observations of Tarzan’s preference for the savage natural world over civilization.
Burroughs gradually evolved his regard for the black tribes. By the time the novels mature, Tarzan relies on a tribe of blacks known as his Waziri and its chief, Muviro. They become the source of many a deus ex machina while coming to his rescue. They are noble, beautiful and strong. He infuses them with loyalty, self-sacrifice, intelligence, and great courage. They love Tarzan and Tarzan loves them. We could all use allies such as these.
By the time we reach Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-Bal-Ja the Golden Lion, most of Tarzan’s most beloved characters play a part in the resolution of the tale. Tantor is here as well as Nkima, the monkey and his loyal Waziri facing down the half-men of Opar, descended from gorillas.
Edgar Rice Burroughs created one of the most fascinating and enduring characters in literature and was wildly successful in his lifetime. None of the film adaptations captured the essence of the author’s vision but Burroughs was more than happy to laugh all the way to the bank. The novels are high adventure with romance and impossible situations (with sometimes ridiculous storylines) but holding all together is the audacious imagination of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who arguably created modern science fiction and infused many of those fantastic situations from what was one time called The Dark Continent, a place of mystery and limitless possibilities that launched many a fantasy adventure. Most of the writers of more recent science fiction were inspired as boys and girls by the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The physical courage of Tarzan is something all boys aspire to. Cast off, naked and alone with nothing but our wits and wills to be engines of our survival, there is a part of every person alive who ought to wish to emulate Tarzan.
The character of an Englishman of noble birth, raised in the wilds of Africa by great apes captured the imagination of many and deservedly so. Tarzan is one of the seminal fictional characters and has never been depicted as well as Burroughs imagined him.
Raised as an ape, he speaks and understands their language, which is also spoken by monkeys and baboons. His sense of smell is highly developed and he is taught to hunt and kill to eat. When a great ape makes a kill, he lets forth with a terrifying howl of victory that lets the rest of the jungle know. It’s a fearsome sound and nothing like Johnny Weissmuller’s glorious yodel. After killing the great ape that was his stepfather, he sets out on his own and discovers the cabin his real father made after being marooned on the African coast.
Inside the cabin, he discovers the skeletons of his parents as well as his father’s knife, which will serve him through the rest of the series. Also inside the cabin are books that were meant for a boy’s instruction. In a fascinating and ingenious sequence, he teaches himself to read and write English without knowing how the language sounds. After rescuing a French soldier from cannibals, he learns French before English.
Among his enemies are Numa, the Lion, Sheeta, the Panther, Hista, the Snake and cannibals. Enemies are what help define protagonists and through the series, there are enemies galore. There are Germans, Swedes, Russians, Communists, Arabs, Shiftas (bandits) and Japanese who find themselves up against the Ape-Man.
Tarzan is fluent in French and English as well as the language of the beasts and the native African tribes who have learned to fear and respect him. He becomes king of the Waziri and them, his loyal subjects and armed force.
The Johnny Weissmuller films are filled with scenes of Tarzan calling for hordes of jungle beasts to charge white hunters and whatever enemy is on the horizon destroying his jungle paradise. Unlike Weissmuller, Tarzan is quite articulate. In the books, the only scene with an animal charge (other than when Tantor is employed) is when Tarzan persuades a baboon king to send his horde of baboons to attack his enemies. Otherwise, his power over animals is limited. Tantor, the Elephant, is Tarzan’s friend and is happy to carry him on his back to wherever he wishes to go.
However, in The Beasts of Tarzan resides extraordinary sequence, where after becoming the chief of a tribe of great apes and saving a panther from a trap that would otherwise have cost it its life, the beasts join Tarzan in his quest to recapture his bride, Jane. Together with marooned sailors, the apes row a hollowed-out tree to the coast of Africa while Sheeta, the panther drools over the sailors but will not eat them out of loyalty to the Lord of the Jungle. Not so, the fate of Jane’s abductors. Any mention of animal loyalties would be amiss without mentioning the Golden Lion, Jad-bal-ja, whom Tarzan raised from a cub to become his ally and watcher. More than one enemy is vanquished by Tarzan’s loyal avenger, who will not attack any of Tarzan’s friends.
In the first part of Tarzan Returns, he wears clothing, fights off killers in Paris and is hired by the French government to go undercover in North Africa. He’s more like James Bond and quite skilled with a gun in his hand in addition to his superior physical prowess.
One of the major threads that runs through the novels are the lost worlds hidden in the Dark Continent. The first of the worlds is Opar, a city and civilization originally from Atlantis and its queen, La. Opar and La figure in several subsequent novels.
Lost worlds are a throwback to the 19th-century writings of H. Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne. Among the lost worlds Burroughs imagined are two warring Roman cities, warring Crusaders who took a wrong turn returning from the Holy Land, warring civilizations of cat people, warring religious fanatics among many others.
The novels are at their best when focusing on Tarzan and his Waziris, his son, and wife, Jane.
The series lost momentum after shifting focus to lost worlds rather than keeping sharp focus on Tarzan. He even cross-fertilized Tarzan with the Pelucidar series sending the Ape-Man to the Earth’s Core. The stories are at their best when focusing on Tarzan himself. Burroughs created one of the great and most enduring characters of fiction. He revolutionized science fiction and fantasy. He predicted many medical advances and probably inspired discoverers and inventors with his audacious fiction.
One barrier for many modern readers is the language used in 1912. There are many archaic terms and descriptors used, but as the series progresses the language evolves and is less off-putting.
One note on the version I read. The later novels were digitized utilizing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software because there are missing periods and abbreviations that don’t make sense otherwise. The letters “Ms” are in place of where it should have read “his” for example among many other artifacts. The edition I read cost 99 cents for 26 complete novels. Figuring out what the word should have been should be easy enough for the reader and well worth the minor extra effort.
Burroughs pulls the series out of the lost world rut in Tarzan and the Lion Man where he infuses science fiction ideas usually found in the Barsoom series. A mad scientist has created a race crossing gorillas with men. It’s a thrilling entry to the series with brilliant elements of horror in it. That novel was written in 1933-34 with a subplot involving a Hollywood production of a Tarzan-like feature filmed on location in Africa. References to Burroughs’ success in Hollywood continue as characters refer to Lord Greystoke as “a regular Tarzan” not knowing who he really is. Once we reach World War II in Tarzan and the Foreign Legion, Lord Greystoke is a British Army Colonel who reveals his true identity to the band of warriors fighting the Japanese on the island of Sumatra.
No discussion of Burroughs’ Tarzan novels would complete without mentioning the “Tantor” in the room: race. It’s important to keep in mind that Burroughs was a product of his time and his writing reflects what were many prevailing attitudes and ideas of the day. The essential idea of a British nobleman raised by apes only to realize the promise of his superior genes is rightly regarded today as racist. Tarzan hates the black tribes he first meets but one must keep in mind that they were also cannibals. There is liberal use of what is now referred to as the N-Word throughout the books. Tarzan himself doesn’t use the word but many of the white characters do and most of those are Tarzan’s enemies. Throughout the novels, Tarzan is frequently predisposed to help a person because they are white and is callous to the fate of the black tribesmen he encounters.
In Tarzan’s defense, he frequently prefers the law of the jungle to the law of man. He would rather be eaten by a lion or a tiger or gored by a rhinoceros than have the knife of a duplicitous man stab him in the back. The books are replete with wry observations of Tarzan’s preference for the savage natural world over civilization.
Burroughs gradually evolved his regard for the black tribes. By the time the novels mature, Tarzan relies on a tribe of blacks known as his Waziri and its chief, Muviro. They become the source of many a deus ex machina while coming to his rescue. They are noble, beautiful and strong. He infuses them with loyalty, self-sacrifice, intelligence, and great courage. They love Tarzan and Tarzan loves them. We could all use allies such as these.
By the time we reach Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-Bal-Ja the Golden Lion, most of Tarzan’s most beloved characters play a part in the resolution of the tale. Tantor is here as well as Nkima, the monkey and his loyal Waziri facing down the half-men of Opar, descended from gorillas.
Edgar Rice Burroughs created one of the most fascinating and enduring characters in literature and was wildly successful in his lifetime. None of the film adaptations captured the essence of the author’s vision but Burroughs was more than happy to laugh all the way to the bank. The novels are high adventure with romance and impossible situations (with sometimes ridiculous storylines) but holding all together is the audacious imagination of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who arguably created modern science fiction and infused many of those fantastic situations from what was one time called The Dark Continent, a place of mystery and limitless possibilities that launched many a fantasy adventure. Most of the writers of more recent science fiction were inspired as boys and girls by the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The physical courage of Tarzan is something all boys aspire to. Cast off, naked and alone with nothing but our wits and wills to be engines of our survival, there is a part of every person alive who ought to wish to emulate Tarzan.
February 9, 2016
Tarzan books
I have not read these books for 30years or more forgot how great they were now I will read them again and again that I have them my wife and Amazon good reads let me relive the adventures of Tarzan
I have not read these books for 30years or more forgot how great they were now I will read them again and again that I have them my wife and Amazon good reads let me relive the adventures of Tarzan
July 10, 2021
Well, here we have it, the works of Tarzan complete and what a mammoth task that was. This is an interesting series to critique. Like with so many books, they are so far removed from the movies, it is shocking. Looking at the Johnny Weissmuller movies, by today’s standards, uncomfortably racist.
Over all the stories were fun, the key to reading Tarzan is to read it superficially. The moment you truly look at the stories, you become uncomfortable, you ask too many questions, the more questions you ask the more that appear.
On one side, the concept of an unknown land and continent opens up a plethora of potential for themes and story lines. Lines of “the missing link” tribes, lost civilisations forgotten in time, the quest for money or eternal youth are all great stories. HOWEVER, looking at them more closely 99% of all these stories you would assume that Africans are dim witted half wits and all the advanced civilisations with money, stone buildings etc were all White. The social/ race divide was truly shocking. In part a reflection of the period, but also a reflection of the author.
In SO MANY cases we have two ‘white’ cities at war with each other’s for eons. These civilisations were descendants of Europeans. One Roman, another English, or Saxon. Yet they have all managed to live in touched, unseen by anyone around them. Each group once never thought of trying to communicate with their country of origin.
Then, we move onto Jane and their son. Makes two random appearances and completely forgotten. Why? Tarzan and Jane, nope, just Tarzan doing whatever he liked, we is KING OF THE APES, LORD OF AFRICA. Africa is his domain, who cares about wife and child!
Then, in other stories, we have the (White) Americans coming to Africa to pillage, plunder, kill as many animals as they can for fun, take gold and jewels. I’ve made links with this in other stories, of Roosevelt reading in Africa killing game, Hemingway doing the same, all these combined have created a sub view of a rich continent for people to use at their beck and call.
The last book and ending, kind of just ended. It ended more on a whimper rather than a glorious bang of satisfaction. So, although many of these stories were truly fun to read, the key is “keep it superficial”
Over all the stories were fun, the key to reading Tarzan is to read it superficially. The moment you truly look at the stories, you become uncomfortable, you ask too many questions, the more questions you ask the more that appear.
On one side, the concept of an unknown land and continent opens up a plethora of potential for themes and story lines. Lines of “the missing link” tribes, lost civilisations forgotten in time, the quest for money or eternal youth are all great stories. HOWEVER, looking at them more closely 99% of all these stories you would assume that Africans are dim witted half wits and all the advanced civilisations with money, stone buildings etc were all White. The social/ race divide was truly shocking. In part a reflection of the period, but also a reflection of the author.
In SO MANY cases we have two ‘white’ cities at war with each other’s for eons. These civilisations were descendants of Europeans. One Roman, another English, or Saxon. Yet they have all managed to live in touched, unseen by anyone around them. Each group once never thought of trying to communicate with their country of origin.
Then, we move onto Jane and their son. Makes two random appearances and completely forgotten. Why? Tarzan and Jane, nope, just Tarzan doing whatever he liked, we is KING OF THE APES, LORD OF AFRICA. Africa is his domain, who cares about wife and child!
Then, in other stories, we have the (White) Americans coming to Africa to pillage, plunder, kill as many animals as they can for fun, take gold and jewels. I’ve made links with this in other stories, of Roosevelt reading in Africa killing game, Hemingway doing the same, all these combined have created a sub view of a rich continent for people to use at their beck and call.
The last book and ending, kind of just ended. It ended more on a whimper rather than a glorious bang of satisfaction. So, although many of these stories were truly fun to read, the key is “keep it superficial”
November 16, 2017
Over the years, I've read all of these novels time and again. They never get tired for me. They are "of their time" and have many passages that are racially insensitive, but I have no problem recognizing that as an idiosyncrasy of them having been written in the early to mid-20th century and enjoying them all the same.
February 6, 2018
The first book was fun--much better than the movies. The second was necessary to finish the love story. By the time I started the third, I thought, well, I see where this is going. The plots get pretty predictable. But the first one and maybe the second are good--if you can look past the racism inherent to the period.
January 18, 2019
Very good
I had never read any Tarzan books and did not realise that so many stories had been written. With so many, some are more enjoyable than others and obviously written at a time when parts of Africa were still unknown.
I had never read any Tarzan books and did not realise that so many stories had been written. With so many, some are more enjoyable than others and obviously written at a time when parts of Africa were still unknown.
May 7, 2016
This is my "published before born" challenge read and it was AWESOME! I started reading around noon today and simply couldn't put it down! It is now 1800 and I am done...can't even move on to another book or watch something on TV because I am reliving the adventures. I was hopeful when I choose this book because "The Land That Time Forgot" is one of my favorite classics. Burroughs did not disappoint ~ and there are more in the series :-D
July 19, 2014
I read many of the Tarzan books as a child and loved them. This collection for very low cost was an opportunity to reread these old classics and see Tarzan as conceived by Burroughs and not the Hollywood version.
August 31, 2016
This was just a fun ride.
August 25, 2016
Loved it
I've never really read the "classics". But these were great. The previous generations Stephen King and JK Rowling! Wonderful clean reading at any age!
I've never really read the "classics". But these were great. The previous generations Stephen King and JK Rowling! Wonderful clean reading at any age!
August 9, 2016
Love re-reading this classic collection of stories that brings back to my childhood
April 21, 2017
I read and loved these books as a child. Nice to have reread them.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews