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Tarzan (John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke) is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer. Created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan first appeared in the novel Tarzan of the Apes (magazine publication 1912, book publication 1914), and subsequently in twenty-five sequels, several authorized books by other authors, and innumerable works in other media, both authorized and unauthorized.

Character biography

Childhood years

Tarzan is the son of a British lord and lady who were marooned on the Atlantic coast of Africa by mutineers. When Tarzan was only an infant, his mother died, and his father was killed by Kerchak, leader of the ape tribe by whom Tarzan was adopted. From then onwards, Tarzan became a feral child. Tarzan's tribe of apes is known as the Mangani, Great Apes of a species unknown to science. Kala is his ape mother. Burroughs added stories occurring during Tarzan's adolescence in his sixth Tarzan book, Jungle Tales of Tarzan. Tarzan is his ape name; his real English name is  John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke (according to Burroughs in Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle; Earl of Greystoke in later, less canonical sources, notably the 1984 movie Greystoke). In fact, Burroughs's narrator in Tarzan of the Apes describes both Clayton and Greystoke as fictitious names – implying that, within the fictional world that Tarzan inhabits, he may have a different real name.

Adult life

As a young adult, Tarzan meets a young American woman, Jane Porter. She, her father, and others of their party are marooned on exactly the same coastal jungle area where Tarzan's biological parents were twenty years earlier. When Jane returns to the United States, Tarzan leaves the jungle in search of her, his one true love. In The Return of Tarzan, Tarzan and Jane marry. In later books he lives with her for a time in England. They have one son, Jack, who takes the ape name Korak ("the Killer"). Tarzan is contemptuous of what he sees as the hypocrisy of civilization, and he and Jane return to Africa, making their home on an extensive estate that becomes a base for Tarzan's later adventures.

Characterization

Burroughs created an elegant version of the wild man figure largely unalloyed with character flaws or faults. He is described as being white, extremely athletic, tall, handsome, and tanned, with grey eyes and long black hair. Emotionally, he is courageous, intelligent, loyal, and steadfast. He is presented as behaving ethically in most situations, except when seeking vengeance under the motivation of grief, as when his ape mother Kala is killed in Tarzan of the Apes, or when he believes Jane has been murdered in Tarzan the Untamed. He is deeply in love with his wife and totally devoted to her; in numerous situations where other women express their attraction to him, Tarzan politely but firmly declines their attentions. When presented with a situation where a weaker individual or party is being preyed upon by a stronger foe, Tarzan invariably takes the side of the weaker party. In dealing with other men, Tarzan is firm and forceful. With male friends, he is reserved but deeply loyal and generous. As a host, he is, likewise, generous and gracious. As a leader, he commands devoted loyalty.

In keeping with these noble characteristics, Tarzan's philosophy embraces an extreme form of "return to nature". Although he is able to pass within society as a civilized individual, he prefers to "strip off the thin veneer of civilization", as Burroughs often puts it.  His preferred dress is a knife and a loincloth of animal hide, his preferred abode is any convenient tree branch when he desires to sleep, and his favored food is raw meat, killed by himself; even better if he is able to bury it a week so that putrefaction has had a chance to tenderize it a bit.

Tarzan's primitivist philosophy was absorbed by countless fans, amongst whom was Jane Goodall, who describes the Tarzan series as having a major influence on her childhood. She states that she felt she would be a much better spouse for Tarzan than his fictional wife, Jane, and that when she first began to live among and study the chimpanzees she was fulfilling her childhood dream of living among the great apes just as Tarzan did. 

Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli has been cited as a major influence on Edgar Rice Burroughs' creation of Tarzan. Mowgli was also an influence for a number of other "wild boy" characters.

Skills and abilities

Tarzan's jungle upbringing gives him abilities far beyond those of ordinary humans. These include climbing, clinging, and leaping as well as any great ape, or better. He uses branches and hanging vines to swing at great speed, a skill acquired among the anthropoid apes.

His strength, speed, stamina, agility, reflexes, senses, flexibility, durability, endurance, and swimming are extraordinary in comparison to normal men. He has wrestled full grown bull apes and gorillas, lions, rhinos, crocodiles, pythons, sharks, tigers, man-size seahorses (once) and even dinosaurs (when he visited Pellucidar).  He is also a skilled tracker and uses his exceptional senses of hearing and smell to follow prey or avoid predators, and kills only for food, yet is a skilled thief when raiding African tribal villages or hunting parties that Tarzan has judged to be brutal and deserve no pity, taking their spears, shields, bows, knives, and most importantly, metal arrowheads.  His sense of hearing also allows him to eavesdrop on conversations between other people near him.

He is also able to communicate with animals, in particular tribes of Great Apes that live in his local region of Africa who possess a primitive language that is unknown to science.  The language may not be complex, but it does have names for individuals, and Tarzan is his Great Ape name.

Tarzan is extremely intelligent, and was literate in English before being able to speak the language when he first encounters other English-speaking people such as his love interest, Jane Porter.  His literacy is self-taught after several years in his early teens by visiting the log cabin of his dead parents and looking at and correctly deducing the function of children's primer/picture books.  The books were brought to Africa by his dead mother who intended to teach her son herself.  He eventually reads every book in his dead father's portable book collection, and is fully aware of geography, basic world history, and his family tree, yet is not able to speak English until after meeting human beings as he never heard what English is supposed to sound like when spoken aloud.  He is "found" by a traveling Frenchman that teaches him the basics of human speech and returns him to England. 

He learns a new language in days, ultimately speaking many languages, including that of the great apes, French, Finnish, English, Dutch, German, Swahili, many Bantu dialects, Arabic, ancient Greek, ancient Latin, Mayan, the languages of the Ant Men and of Pellucidar.

It should be noted that unlike depictions in black and white movies of the 1930s, after learning to speak a language in the novels Tarzan/John Clayton is very articulate, reserved (he prefers to listen and carefully observe before speaking) and does not speak in broken English as the classic movies depict him.

He also communicates with many species of jungle animals, and has been shown to be a skilled impressionist, able to mimic the sound of a gunshot perfectly.

In Tarzan's Quest (1935), he was one of the recipients of an immortality drug at the end of the book that functionally made him immortal.

Literature

Tarzan has been called one of the best-known literary characters in the world.  In addition to more than two dozen books by Burroughs and a handful more by authors with the blessing of Burroughs' estate, the character has appeared in films, radio, television, comic strips, and comic books. Numerous parodies and pirated works have also appeared.

Burroughs considered other names for the character, including "Zantar" and "Tublat Zan," before he settled on "Tarzan." 

Even though the copyright on Tarzan of the Apes has expired in the United States of America and other countries, the name Tarzan is claimed as a trademark of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

Critical reception

While Tarzan of the Apes met with some critical success, subsequent books in the series received a cooler reception and have been criticized for being derivative and formulaic. The characters are often said to be two-dimensional, the dialogue wooden, and the storytelling devices (such as excessive reliance on coincidence) strain credulity. According to author Rudyard Kipling (who himself wrote stories of a feral child, The Jungle Books Mowgli), Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes just so that he could "find out how bad a book he could write and get away with it." 

While Burroughs is not a polished novelist, he is a vivid storyteller, and many of his novels are still in print.  In 1963, author Gore Vidal wrote a piece on the Tarzan series that, while pointing out several of the deficiencies that the Tarzan books have as works of literature, praises Edgar Rice Burroughs for creating a compelling "daydream figure".  Critical reception grew more positive with the 1981 study by Erling B. Holtsmark, Tarzan and Tradition: Classical Myth in Popular Literature.  Holtsmark added a volume on Burroughs for Twayne's United States Author Series in 1986.  In 2010, Stan Galloway provided a sustained study of the adolescent period of the fictional Tarzan's life in The Teenage Tarzan. 

Despite critical panning, the Tarzan stories have remained popular. Burroughs's melodramatic situations and the elaborate details he works into his fictional world, such as his construction of a partial language for his great apes, appeal to a worldwide fan base. 

The Tarzan books and movies employ extensive stereotyping to a degree common in the times in which they were written. This has led to criticism in later years, with changing social views and customs, including charges of racism since the early 1970s.  The early books give a pervasively negative and stereotypical portrayal of native Africans, including Arabs. In The Return of Tarzan, Arabs are "surly looking" and call Christians "dogs", while blacks are "lithe, ebon warriors, gesticulating and jabbering". One could make an equal argument that when it came to blacks that Burroughs was simply depicting unwholesome characters as unwholesome and the good ones in a better light as in Chapter 6 of Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar where Burroughs writes of Mugambi, "...nor could a braver or more loyal guardian have been found in any clime or upon any soil."  Other groups are stereotyped as well. A Swede has "a long yellow moustache, an unwholesome complexion, and filthy nails", and Russians cheat at cards. The aristocracy (except the House of Greystoke) and royalty are invariably effete.  In later books, Africans are portrayed somewhat more realistically as people. For example, in Tarzan's Quest, while the depiction of Africans remains relatively primitive, they are portrayed more individualistically, with a greater variety of character traits (positive and negative), while the main villains are white people. Burroughs never loses his distaste for European royalty, though. 

Burroughs' opinions, manifested through the narrative voice in the stories, reflect common attitudes in his time, which in a 21st-century context would be considered racist and sexist. However Thomas F. Bertonneau writes about Burroughs' "conception of the feminine that elevates the woman to the same level as the man and that – in such characters as Dian of the Pellucidar novels or Dejah Thoris of the Barsoom novels – figures forth a female type who corresponds neither to desperate housewife, full-lipped prom-date, middle-level careerist office-manager, nor frowning ideological feminist-professor, but who exceeds all these by bounds in her realized humanity and in so doing suggests their insipidity."  The author is not especially mean-spirited in his attitudes. His heroes do not engage in violence against women or in racially motivated violence. In Tarzan of the Apes, details of a background of suffering experienced at the hands of whites by Mbonga's "once great" people are repeatedly told with evident sympathy, and in explanation or even justification of their current animosity toward whites.

Although the character of Tarzan does not directly engage in violence against women, feminist scholars have critiqued the presence of other sympathetic male characters who do with Tarzan's approval. In Tarzan and the Ant Men, the men of a fictional tribe of creatures called the Alali gain social dominance of their society by beating Alali women into submission with weapons that Tarzan willingly provides them. Following the battle, Burroughs states: "To entertain Tarzan and to show him what great strides civilization had taken—the son of The First Woman seized a female by the hair and dragging her to him struck her heavily about the head and face with his clenched fist, and the woman fell upon her knees and fondled his legs, looking wistfully into his face, her own glowing with love and admiration. (178)" While Burroughs depicts some female characters with humanistic equalizing elements, Torgovnick argues that violent scenes against women in the context of male political and social domination are condoned in his writing, reinforcing a notion of gendered hierarchy where patriarchy is portrayed as the natural pinnacle of society.

In regards to race, a superior-inferior relationship with valuation is also accordingly implied, as it is unmistakable in virtually all interactions between whites and blacks in the Tarzan stories, and similar relationships and valuations can be seen in most other interactions between differing people, although one could argue that such interactions are the bedrock of the dramatic narrative and without such valuations there is no story. According to James Loewen's Sundown Towns, this may be a vestige of Burroughs' having been from Oak Park, Illinois, a former Sundown town (a town that forbids non-whites from living within it).

Gail Bederman takes a different view in her Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. There she describes how various people of the time either challenged or upheld the idea that "civilization" is predicated on white masculinity. She closes with a chapter on 1912's Tarzan of the Apes because the story's protagonist is, according to her, the ultimate male by the standards of 1912 white America. Bederman does note that Tarzan, "an instinctivily chivalrous Anglo-Saxon", does not engage in sexual violence, renouncing his "masculine impulse to rape." However, she also notes that not only does Tarzan kill black man Kulonga in revenge for killing his ape mother (a stand-in for his biological white mother) by hanging him, "lyncher Tarzan" actually enjoys killing black people, the cannibalistic Mbongans, for example. Bederman, in fact, reminds readers that when Tarzan first introduces himself to Jane, he does so as "Tarzan, the killer of beasts and many black men." The novel climaxes with Tarzan saving Jane—who in the original novel is not British, but a white woman from Baltimore, Maryland—from a black ape rapist. When he leaves the jungle and sees "civilized" Africans farming, his first instinct is to kill them just for being black. "Like the lynch victims reported in the Northern press, Tarzan's victims--cowards, cannibals, and despoilers of white womanhood--lack all manhood. Tarzan's lynchings thus prove himself the superior man."

Despite embodying all the tropes of white supremacy espoused or rejected by the people she had reviewed (Theodore Roosevelt, G. Stanley Hall, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ida B. Wells), Bederman states that, in all probability, Burroughs was not trying to make any kind of statement or echo any of them. "He probably never heard of any of them." Instead, Bederman writes that Burroughs proves her point because in telling racist and sexist stories whose protagonist boasted of killing blacks, he was not being unusual at all, but was instead just being a typical 1912 white American.

Tarzan is a white European male who grows up with apes. According to "Taking Tarzan Seriously" by Marianna Torgovnick, Tarzan is confused with the social hierarchy that he is a part of. Unlike everyone else in his society, Tarzan is the only one who is not clearly part of any social group. All the other members of his world are not able to climb or decline socially because they are already part of a social hierarchy which is stagnant. Turgovnick writes that since Tarzan was raised as an ape, he thinks and acts like an ape. However, instinctively he is human and he resorts to being human when he is pushed to. The reason of his confusion is that he does not understand what the typical white male is supposed to act like. His instincts eventually kick in when he is in the midst of this confusion, and he ends up dominating the jungle. In Tarzan, the jungle is a microcosm for the world in general in 1912 to the early 1930s. His climbing of the social hierarchy proves that the European white male is the most dominant of all races/sexes, no matter what the circumstance. Furthermore, Turgovnick writes that when Tarzan first meets Jane, she is slightly repulsed but also fascinated by his animal-like actions. As the story progresses, Tarzan surrenders his knife to Jane in an oddly chivalrous gesture, which makes Jane fall for Tarzan despite his odd circumstances. Turgovnick believes that this displays an instinctual, civilized chivalry that Burrough believes is common in white men.  

Unauthorized works

After Burroughs' death a number of writers produced new Tarzan stories. In some instances, the estate managed to prevent publication of such works. The most notable example in the United States was a series of five novels by the pseudonymous "Barton Werper" that appeared 1964-65 by Gold Star Books (part of Charlton Comics). As a result of legal action by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., they were taken off the market.  Similar series appeared in other countries, notably Argentina, Israel, and some Arab countries.

Modern fiction

In 1972, science fiction author Philip José Farmer wrote Tarzan Alive, a biography of Tarzan utilizing the frame device that he was a real person. In Farmer's fictional universe, Tarzan, along with Doc Savage and Sherlock Holmes, are the cornerstones of the Wold Newton family. Farmer wrote two novels, Hadon of Ancient Opar and Flight to Opar, set in the distant past and giving the antecedents of the lost city of Opar, which plays an important role in the Tarzan books. In addition, Farmer's A Feast Unknown, and its two sequels Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin, are pastiches of the Tarzan and Doc Savage stories, with the premise that they tell the story of the real characters the fictional characters are based upon. A Feast Unknown is somewhat infamous among Tarzan and Doc Savage fans for its graphic violence and sexual content.

Tarzan in film and other non-print media

Film

The Internet Movie Database lists 200 movies with Tarzan in the title between 1918 and 2014. The first Tarzan movies were silent pictures adapted from the original Tarzan novels, which appeared within a few years of the character's creation. The first actor to portray the adult Tarzan was Elmo Lincoln in 1918's Tarzan Of The Apes. With the advent of talking pictures, a popular Tarzan movie franchise was developed, which lasted from the 1930s through the 1960s. Starting with Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932 through twelve films until 1948, the franchise was anchored by former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller in the title role. Weissmuller and his immediate successors were enjoined to portray the ape-man as a noble savage speaking broken English, in marked contrast to the cultured aristocrat of Burroughs's novels.

With the exception of the Burroughs co-produced The New Adventures of Tarzan, this "me Tarzan, you Jane" characterization of Tarzan persisted until the late 1950s, when producer Sy Weintraub, having bought the film rights from producer Sol Lesser, produced Tarzan's Greatest Adventure followed by eight other films and a television series.  The Weintraub productions portray a Tarzan that is closer to Edgar Rice Burroughs' original concept in the novels: a jungle lord who speaks grammatical English and is well educated and familiar with civilization. Most Tarzan films made before the mid-fifties were black-and-white films shot on studio sets, with stock jungle footage edited in. The Weintraub productions from 1959 on were shot in foreign locations and were in color.

There were also several serials and features that competed with the main franchise, including Tarzan the Fearless (1933) starring Buster Crabbe and The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935) starring Herman Brix. The latter serial was unique for its period in that it was partially filmed on location (Guatemala) and portrayed Tarzan as educated. It was the only Tarzan film project for which Edgar Rice Burroughs was personally involved in the production.

Tarzan films from the 1930s on often featured Tarzan's chimpanzee companion Cheeta, his consort Jane (not usually given a last name), and an adopted son, usually known only as "Boy." The Weintraub productions from 1959 on dropped the character of Jane and portrayed Tarzan as a lone adventurer. Later Tarzan films have been occasional and somewhat idiosyncratic. Recently, Tony Goldwyn portrayed Tarzan in Disney’s animated film of the same name (1999). This version marked a new beginning for the ape man, taking its inspiration equally from Burroughs and the 1984 live-action film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Since Greystoke, two additional live-action Tarzan movies have been released, 1998's Tarzan and the Lost City and 2016's The Legend of Tarzan, both period pieces that drew inspiration from Edgar Rice Burroughs' writings.

Radio

Tarzan was the hero of two popular radio programs in the United States. The first aired from 1932–1936 with James Pierce in the role of Tarzan. The second ran from 1951–1953 with Lamont Johnson in the title role. 

Television

Television later emerged as a primary vehicle bringing the character to the public. From the mid-1950s, all the extant sound Tarzan films became staples of Saturday morning television aimed at young and teenaged viewers. In 1958, movie Tarzan Gordon Scott filmed three episodes for a prospective television series. The program did not sell, but a different live action Tarzan series produced by Sy Weintraub and starring Ron Ely ran on NBC from 1966 to 1968. An animated series from Filmation, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, aired from 1976 to 1977, followed by the anthology programs Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour (1977–1978), Tarzan and the Super 7 (1978–1980), The Tarzan/Lone Ranger Adventure Hour (1980–1981), and The Tarzan/Lone Ranger/Zorro Adventure Hour) (1981–1982). Joe Lara starred in the title role in Tarzan in Manhattan (1989), an offbeat TV movie, and later returned in a completely different interpretation in Tarzan: The Epic Adventures (1996), a new live-action series. In between the two productions with Lara, Tarzán, a half-hour syndicated series ran from 1991 through 1994. In this version of the show, Tarzan was portrayed as a blond environmentalist, with Jane turned into a French ecologist. Disney’s animated series The Legend of Tarzan (2001–2003) was a spin-off from its animated film. The latest television series was the live-action Tarzan (2003), which starred male model Travis Fimmel and updated the setting to contemporary New York City, with Jane as a police detective, played by Sarah Wayne Callies. The series was cancelled after only eight episodes. A 1981 television special, The Muppets Go to the Movies, features a short sketch titled "Tarzan and Jane". Lily Tomlin plays Jane opposite The Great Gonzo as Tarzan. In addition, the Muppets have made reference to Tarzan on half a dozen occasions since the 1960s. Saturday Night Live featured recurring sketches with the speech-impaired trio of "Frankenstein, Tonto, and Tarzan".

Stage

A 1921 Broadway production of Tarzan of The Apes starred Ronald Adair as Tarzan and Ethel Dwyer as Jane Porter. In 1976, Richard O'Brien wrote a musical entitled T. Zee, loosely based on Tarzan but restyled in a rock idiom. Tarzan, a musical stage adaptation of the 1999 animated feature, opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway on May 10, 2006. The show, a Disney Theatrical production, was directed and designed by Bob Crowley. The same version of Tarzan that was played at the Richard Rodgers Theatre is being played throughout Europe and has been a huge success in the Netherlands. The Broadway show closed on July 8, 2007. Tarzan also appeared in the Tarzan Rocks! show at the Theatre in the Wild at Walt Disney World Resort's Disney's Animal Kingdom. The show closed in 2006.

Video and computer games

In the mid-1980s there was an arcade video game called Jungle King that featured a Tarzanesque character in a loin cloth. A game under the title Tarzan Goes Ape was released in the 1980s for the Commodore 64. A Tarzan computer game by Michael Archer was produced by Martech. Disney's Tarzan had seen video games released for the PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color. Followed by Disney's Tarzan Untamed for the PS2 and Gamecube. Tarzan also appeared in the PS2 game Kingdom Hearts, although this Tarzan was shown in the Disney context, not the original conceptional idea of Tarzan by Burroughs. In the first Rayman, a Tarzanesque version of Rayman named Tarayzan appears in the Dream Forest.

In the 1982 video game Pitfall! for the Atari VCS game console system, the main hero, called "Pitfall Harry," sometimes has to traverse vines over dangerous lakes. When doing so, a sound effect is played imitating Tarzan's signature cry.

Action figures

Throughout the 1970s Mego Corporation licensed the Tarzan character and produced 8" action figures which they included in their "World's Greatest Super Heroes" line of characters.  In 1975 they also produced a 3" "Bendy" figure made of poseable, malleable plastic.

Ephemera

Several Tarzan-themed products have been manufactured, including View-Master reels and packets, numerous Tarzan coloring books, children's books, follow-the-dots, and activity books.

Tarzan in comics

Tarzan of the Apes was adapted in newspaper strip form, in early 1929, with illustrations by Hal Foster. A full page Sunday strip began March 15, 1931 by Rex Maxon. Over the years, many artists have drawn the Tarzan comic strip, notably Burne Hogarth, Russ Manning, and Mike Grell. The daily strip began to reprint old dailies after the last Russ Manning daily (#10,308, which ran on 29 July 1972). The Sunday strip also turned to reprints circa 2000. Both strips continue as reprints today in a few newspapers and in Comics Revue magazine. NBM Publishing did a high quality reprint series of the Foster and Hogarth work on Tarzan in a series of hardback and paperback reprints in the 1990s.

Tarzan has appeared in many comic books from numerous publishers over the years. The character's earliest comic book appearances were in comic strip reprints published in several titles, such as Sparkler, Tip Top Comics and Single Series. Western Publishing published Tarzan in Dell Comics's Four Color Comics #134 & 161 in 1947, before giving him his own series, Tarzan, published through Dell Comics and later Gold Key Comics from January–February 1948 to February 1972). DC took over the series in 1972, publishing Tarzan #207-258 from April 1972 to February 1977, including work by Joe Kubert. In 1977 the series moved to Marvel Comics, which restarted the numbering rather than assuming that used by the previous publishers. Marvel issued Tarzan #1-29 (as well as three Annuals), from June 1977 to October 1979, mainly by John Buscema. Following the conclusion of the Marvel series the character had no regular comic book publisher for a number of years. During this period Blackthorne Comics published Tarzan in 1986, and Malibu Comics published Tarzan comics in 1992. Dark Horse Comics has published various Tarzan series from 1996 to the present, including reprints of works from previous publishers like Gold Key and DC, and joint projects with other publishers featuring crossovers with other characters.

There have also been a number of different comic book projects from other publishers over the years, in addition to various minor appearances of Tarzan in other comic books. The Japanese manga series Jungle no Ouja Ta-chan (Jungle King Tar-chan) by Tokuhiro Masaya was based loosely on Tarzan. Also, manga "god" Osamu Tezuka created a Tarzan manga in 1948 entitled Tarzan no Himitsu Kichi (Tarzan's Secret Base).

Works inspired by Tarzan

Jerry Siegel named Tarzan and another Burroughs character, John Carter, as early inspiration for his creation of Superman. 

Tarzan's popularity inspired numerous imitators in pulp magazines. A number of these, like Kwa and Ka-Zar were direct or loosely veiled copies; others, like Polaris of the Snows, were similar characters in different settings, or with different gimmicks. Of these characters the most popular was Ki-Gor, the subject of fifty-nine novels that appeared between winter 1939 to spring 1954 in the magazine Jungle Stories. 

In popular culture

Tarzan is often used as a nickname to indicate a similarity between a person's characteristics and that of the fictional character. Individuals with an exceptional 'ape-like' ability to climb, cling and leap beyond that of ordinary humans may often receive the nickname 'Tarzan'.  An example is retired American baseball player Joe Wallis. 

British politician Michael Heseltine is nicknamed Tarzan, and was often portrayed as such in the press.

Comedian Carol Burnett was often prompted by her audiences to perform her trademark Tarzan yell. She explained that it originated in her youth when she and a friend watched a Tarzan movie. 

"Tarzan Boy" is a song recorded by Italian-based act Baltimora. It was the group's debut single, released in April 1985, from its first album Living in the Background, on which it features as first track. The song was re-recorded in 1993 and has been covered by several artists throughout the years. The refrain uses Tarzan's cry as a melodic line. The song is rhythmical, with an electronic melody and simple lyrics.[2]

A 2016 GEICO TV commercial depicts Tarzan and his wife Jane arguing over directions while they're swinging from tree to tree. 
 

Bibliography

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

;Main Series
#Tarzan of the Apes (1912) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[http://gutenberg.org/etext/78 Ebook]) ([http://librivox.org/tarzan-of-the-apes/ LibriVox.org Audiobook])
#The Return of Tarzan (1913) ([http://gutenberg.org/etext/81 Ebook]) ([http://librivox.org/the-return-of-tarzan-by-edgar-rice-burroughs/ Audiobook])
#The Beasts of Tarzan (1914) ([http://gutenberg.org/etext/85 Ebook]) ([http://librivox.org/the-beasts-of-tarzan/ Audiobook])
#The Son of Tarzan (1914) ([http://gutenberg.org/etext/90 Ebook]) ([http://librivox.org/son-of-tarzan-by-edgar-rice-burroughs/ Audiobook])
#Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (1916) ([http://gutenberg.org/etext/92 Ebook]) ([http://librivox.org/tarzan-and-the-jewels-of-opar-by-edgar-rice-burroughs/ Audiobook])
#Jungle Tales of Tarzan (1919) ([http://gutenberg.org/etext/106 Ebook]) ([http://librivox.org/jungle-tales-of-tarzan-by-edgar-rice-burroughs/ Audiobook])
#*"Tarzan's First Love" (1916)
#*"The Capture of Tarzan" (1916)
#*"The Fight for the Balu" (1916)
#*"The God of Tarzan" (1916)
#*"Tarzan and the Black Boy" (1917)
#*"The Witch-Doctor Seeks Vengeance" (1917)
#*"The End of Bukawai" (1917)
#*"The Lion" (1917)
#*"The Nightmare" (1917)
#*"The Battle for Teeka" (1917)
#*"A Jungle Joke" (1917)
#*"Tarzan Rescues the Moon" (1917)
#Tarzan the Untamed (1920) ([http://gutenberg.org/etext/1401 Ebook])
#*"Tarzan and the Huns" (1919)
#*"Tarzan and the Valley of Luna" (1920)
#Tarzan the Terrible (1921) ([http://gutenberg.org/etext/2020 Ebook]) ([http://librivox.org/tarzan-the-terrible-by-edgar-rice-burroughs/ Audiobook])
#Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1922, 1923) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100271.txt Ebook])
#Tarzan and the Ant Men (1924) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600651h.html Ebook])
#Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (1927, 1928) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600681.txt Ebook])
#Tarzan and the Lost Empire (1928) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600911.txt Ebook])
#Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601071h.html Ebook])
#Tarzan the Invincible (1930, 1931) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500191h.html Ebook])
#Tarzan Triumphant (1931) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601121.txt Ebook])
#Tarzan and the City of Gold (1932) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500241.txt Ebook])
#Tarzan and the Lion Man (1933, 1934) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600711.txt Ebook])
#Tarzan and the Leopard Men (1935) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500201h.html Ebook])
#Tarzan's Quest (1935, 1936) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601011.txt Ebook])
#Tarzan and the Forbidden City (1938) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600671.txt Ebook])
#Tarzan the Magnificent (1939) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500211h.html Ebook])
#*"Tarzan and the Magic Men" (1936)
#*"Tarzan and the Elephant Men" (1937–1938)
#Tarzan and the Foreign Legion (1947) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600701.txt Ebook])
#Tarzan and the Madman (1964)
#Tarzan and the Castaways (1965)
#*"Tarzan and the Castaways" (1941) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600661.txt Ebook])
#*"Tarzan and the Champion" (1940)
#*"Tarzan and the Jungle Murders" (1940)

#Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins (1963, for younger readers)
**"The Tarzan Twins" (1927) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601161.txt Ebook])
**"Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins and Jad-Bal-Ja the Golden Lion" (1936) ([http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900371.txt Ebook])

#Tarzan: the Lost Adventure (with Joe R. Lansdale) (1995)

By other authors

*Barton Werper – these novels were never authorized by the Burroughs estate, were taken off the market and remaining copies destroyed.
*#Tarzan and the Silver Globe (1964)
*#Tarzan and the Cave City (1964)
*#Tarzan and the Snake People (1964)
*#Tarzan and the Abominable Snowmen (1965)
*#Tarzan and the Winged Invaders (1965)
*Fritz Leiber – the first novel authorized by the Burroughs estate, and numbered as the 25th book in the Tarzan series.
**Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966)
*Philip José Farmer
**Tarzan Alive (1972) a fictional biography of Tarzan (here Lord Greystoke), which is one of the two foundational books (along with Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life) of the Wold Newton family.
**The Adventure of the Peerless Peer (1974) Sherlock Holmes goes to Africa and meets Tarzan.
**The Dark Heart of Time (1999) this novel was specifically authorized by the Burroughs estate, and references Tarzan by name rather than just by inference. The story is set between Tarzan the Untamed and Tarzan the Terrible.
Farmer also wrote a novel based on his own fascination with Tarzan, entitled Lord Tyger, and translated the novel Tarzan of the Apes into Esperanto.

*R. A. Salvatore
**Tarzan: The Epic Adventures (1996) an authorized novel based on the pilot episode of the series of the same name.
*Nigel Cox
**Tarzan Presley (2004) This novel combines aspects of Tarzan and Elvis Presley into a single character named Tarzan Presley, within New Zealand and American settings. Upon its release, it was subject to legal action in the United States, and has not been reprinted since its initial publication.

New Tarzan

Publisher Faber and Faber with the backing of the Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. have updated the series using Author Andy Briggs and in 2011 he published the first of the books Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy. In 2012 he published the second book Tarzan: The Jungle Warrior In 2013, he has published the third book Tarzan: The Savage Lands. 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

Tarzan of the Apes (1912)

The novel tells the story of John Clayton III. John and Alice (Rutherford) Clayton II, Lord and Lady Greystoke of England, are marooned in the western coastal jungles of equatorial Africa in 1888. In September of 1889 their son John Clayton III is born. At one year old his mother dies, and soon thereafter his father is killed by the savage king ape Kerchak. The infant is then adopted by the she-ape Kala. 

Clayton is named "Tarzan" ("White Skin" in the ape language) and raised in ignorance of his human heritage. 

As a boy, feeling alienated from his peers due to their physical differences, he discovers his true parents' cabin, where he first learns of others like himself in their books. Using basic primers with pictures, over many years he teaches himself to read English, but having never heard it, cannot speak it.

Upon his return from one visit to the cabin, he is attacked by a huge gorilla which he manages to kill with his father's knife, although he is terribly wounded in the struggle. As he grows up, Tarzan becomes a skilled hunter, exciting the jealousy of Kerchak, the ape leader, who finally attacks him. Tarzan kills Kerchak and takes his place as "king" of the apes.

Later, a tribe of black Africans settle in the area, and Tarzan's adopted mother, Kala, is killed by one of its hunters. Avenging himself on the killer, Tarzan begins an antagonistic relationship with the tribe, raiding its village for weapons and practicing cruel pranks on them.  They, in turn, regard him as an evil spirit and attempt to placate him.

At about the age of 20 a new party is marooned on the coast, including Jane Porter, the first white woman Tarzan has ever seen.  Tarzan's cousin, William Cecil Clayton, unwitting usurper of the ape man's ancestral English estate, is also among the party. Tarzan spies on the newcomers, aids them in secret, and saves Jane from the perils of the jungle. 

Among the party was French Naval Officer Paul D'Arnot. While rescuing D'Arnot from the natives, a rescue ship recovers the castaways. D'Arnot teaches Tarzan to speak French and offers to take Tarzan to the land of white men where he might connect with Jane again. On their journey, D'Arnot teaches him how to behave among white men.  In the ensuing months, Tarzan eventually learns to speak English as well.

Ultimately, Tarzan travels to find Jane in Wisconsin, USA.  Tarzan learns the bitter news that she has become engaged to William Clayton. Meanwhile, clues from his parents' cabin have enabled D'Arnot to prove Tarzan's true identity as John Clayton the Earl of Greystoke.  Instead of reclaiming his inheritance from William, Tarzan chooses rather to conceal and renounce his heritage for the sake of Jane's happiness.

The Return of Tarzan (1913)

The novel picks up soon after where Tarzan of the Apes left off. The year is 1910 and Tarzan is 22 years old.  The ape man, feeling rootless in the wake of his noble sacrifice of his prospects of wedding Jane Porter, leaves America for Europe to visit his friend Paul d'Arnot. On the ship he becomes embroiled in the affairs of Countess Olga de Coude, her husband, Count Raoul de Coude, and two shady characters attempting to prey on them, Nikolas Rokoff and his henchman Alexis Paulvitch. Rokoff, it turns out, is also the countess's brother. Tarzan thwarts the villains' scheme, making them his deadly enemies. 

Later, in France, Rokoff tries time and again to eliminate the ape man, finally engineering a duel between him and the count by making it appear that he is the countess's lover. Tarzan deliberately refuses to defend himself in the duel, even offering the count his own weapon after the latter fails to kill him with his own, a grand gesture that convinces his antagonist of his innocence. In return, Count Raoul finds him a job as a special agent in the French ministry of war. Tarzan is assigned to service in Algeria. 

A sequence of adventures among the local Arabs ensues, including another brush with Rokoff. Afterward Tarzan sails for Cape Town and strikes up a shipboard acquaintance with Hazel Strong, a friend of Jane's. But Rokoff and Paulovitch are also aboard, and manage to ambush him and throw him overboard.

Miraculously, Tarzan manages to swim to shore, and finds himself in the coastal jungle where he was brought up by the apes. He soon rescues and befriends a native warrior, Busuli of the Waziri, and is adopted into the Waziri tribe. After defeating a raid on their village by ivory raiders, Tarzan becomes their chief. 

The Waziri know of a lost city deep in the jungle, from which they have obtained their golden ornaments. Tarzan has them take him there, but is captured by its inhabitants, a race of ape-like men, and is condemned to be sacrificed to their sun god. To Tarzan's surprise, the priestess to perform the sacrifice is a beautiful woman who speaks the ape language he learned as a child. She tells him she is La, high priestess of the lost city of Opar. When the sacrificial ceremony is fortuitously interrupted, she hides Tarzan and promises to lead him to freedom. But the ape man escapes on his own, locates a treasure chamber, and manages to rejoin the Waziri.

Meanwhile, Hazel Strong has reached Cape Town where she meets Jane and her father, Professor Porter, together with Jane's fiancé, Tarzan's cousin William Cecil Clayton. They are all invited on a cruise up the west coast of Africa aboard the Lady Alice, the yacht of another friend, Lord Tennington. Rokoff, now using the alias of M. Thuran, ingratiates himself with the party and is also invited along. The Lady Alice breaks down and sinks, forcing the passengers and crew into the lifeboats. The one containing Jane, Clayton and "Thuran" is separated from the others and suffers terrible privations. Coincidentally, the boat finally makes shore in the same general area that Tarzan did. 

The three construct a rude shelter and eke out an existence of near starvation for some weeks until Jane and William Clayton are surprised in the forest by a lion. Clayton loses Jane's respect by cowering in fear before the beast instead of defending her. But they are not attacked, and discover the lion dead, speared by an unknown hand. Their hidden savior is in fact Tarzan, who leaves without revealing himself, not realizing whom he was rescuing. Jane breaks off her engagement to William.

Later Jane is kidnapped and taken to Opar by a party of the Oparian ape-men who were pursuing their escaped sacrifice, Tarzan. The ape man learns of her capture and tracks them, managing to save her from being sacrificed by La. La is crushed by Tarzan's spurning of her for Jane. 

Tarzan and Jane make their way up the coast to the former's boyhood cabin, where they encounter the remainder of the castaways of the Lady Alice, safe and sound after having been recovered by Tarzan's friend D'Arnot in another ship. "Thuran" is exposed as Rokoff and arrested.

Tarzan weds Jane and Tennington weds Hazel in a double ceremony performed by Professor Porter, who had been ordained a minister in his youth. Then they all set sail for civilization, taking along the treasure Tarzan had found in Opar.

The Beasts of Tarzan (1914)

The story begins two years after the conclusion the previous book, around 1913 when Tarzan is 24 years old. Tarzan (Lord Greystoke) and Jane have had a son they named Jack. Tarzan has spent much time building an estate home on the Waziri lands in Uziri, Africa, but has returned to his ancestral estate in London for the rainy season.

Tarzan's adversaries from the previous novel, Nikolas Rokoff and Alexis Paulvitch, escape prison and kidnap the Greystoke heir. But the trap is elaborate and insidious, leading both Tarzan and Jane to be kidnapped as well. Rokoff exiles Tarzan on a jungle island, informing him that Jack will be left with a cannibal tribe to be raised as one of their own, while Jane's fate was to be left to his imagination.

Using his jungle skill and primal intelligence, Tarzan wins the help of Sheeta, the vicious panther, a tribe of great apes led by the moderately intelligent Akut, and a native warrior, Mugambi. With their aid, Tarzan reaches the mainland and begins a lengthy pursuit to find Jane (who is actively engineering her own extrication) and Jack.

By the end of the story Rokoff is dead, while Paulvitch, his cohort, is presumed dead but manages to escape into the jungle.  The Tarzan family returned to London along with Mugambi, who is offered a place at Tarzan's Waziri estate.

The Son of Tarzan (1914)

The story begins 10 years after the conclusion of the previous novel, which places it about 1923.  Tarzan (John Clayton) would be about 34 and his son, Jack, around 11. During the past decade, Alexis Paulvitch, who had escaped Tarzan at the end of the last novel, has lived a hideous life of abuse and disease among tribal people in Africa. Now he is discovered by a European ship and taken aboard. In the months that followed, Paulvitch encounters the ape, Akut, (whom Tarzan had befriended in that previous story) at one of the ship's stops. Because of Akut's interactions with Tarzan, he was unafraid of white men, and Paulvitch, unaware of the previous relationship, saw an opportunity to make some money.  He took Akut to London and began displaying him publicly.

After the trauma of the kidnappings ten years earlier, Jane had refused to return to Africa or to allow Jack to know anything about his father's past for fear that he might somehow try to relive it. Perhaps she instinctively knew that Jack was somehow very connected to Tarzan's old life, for Jack did have an avid interest in wildlife and he was extremely athletic. When the Claytons heard about the displayed ape, John decided to take Jack to see him. Tarzan was surprised to find the ape was his old friend, Akut, and began conversing with him. Jack was amazed to see that his father could do so. John then told Jack of his life as Tarzan.

Jack started sneaking away to see Akut and began learning the language of the apes. Jack began to form a plan to take Akut back to the jungle. Paulvitch saw an opportunity for revenge, and agreed to help Jack. They escape to an African port where Paulvitch attacks Jack. Jack (probably now 12), like his father, was man-sized as a teen. Paulvitch is killed, and  Jack, terrified, escapes into the jungle with Akut, thinking he will have to run for the rest of his life.

Like Tarzan before him, Jack learns survival in the jungle and encounters the Mongani apes, who he can speak with because of his dialogue with Akut. The nearest they can manage of his name "Jack" in the ape tounge is "Korak". This means "killer" which seems appropriate since Jack has proven himself to be such.

By around the age of 13 Jack finds an abused girl of about 11 named Meriem and rescues her. He begins teaching her to survive the jungle and they begin a sibling type relationship and live adventurously in the jungle for several years.

In the interim, Tarzan and Jane have begun living at their Wahiri estate in Africa again, not having any idea what became of their son. After about six years Tarzan and Jane encounter Korak (now about 18) and Meriem (now 16) and reunite with them and are returned to London and married. Arguably, the book is as much about Meriem as it is about Tarzan's son.

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (1916)

At the end of the previous novel (#4) Tarzan (John Clayton) and Jane's son, Jack a.k.a. Korak, had come into adulthood in about 1930. This novel (#5), while offering no dates, appears to take place during the interim of Jack's childhood disappearance, perhaps around 1927. John (Tarzan) and Jane Clayton have left London and returned to their Waziri ranch, some distance from Tarzan's original stomping grounds in Africa (where Jack will find them in novel #4).

John Clayton finds that his fortunes have been embezzled, so he decides to return to the lost city of Opar, where he procured a large supply of gold from their forgotten vaults and reinforced his family fortune (in novel #2). 

During this return trip Tarzan is injured in an earthquake and loses all memories of his adult, civilized life and about Jane. La, the high priestess of the Flaming god of Opar, takes advantage of his amnesia.  She had fallen in lust with the ape man during their first encounter. But while La hopes his amnesia opens the door for her lustful advances, her 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 coming to her rescue.

Jungle Tales of Tarzan (1919)

A collection of twelve loosely connected short stories of Tarzan's late teenage years, probably 1907-1908, within a year or two before Tarzan first sees white people including Jane Porter.

#"Tarzan's First Love"
#"The Capture of Tarzan"
#"The Fight for the Balu"
#"The God of Tarzan"
#"Tarzan and the Black Boy"
#"The Witch-Doctor Seeks Vengeance"
#"The End of Bukawai"
#"The Lion"
#"The Nightmare"
#"The Battle for Teeka"
#"A Jungle Joke"
#"Tarzan Rescues the Moon"

Tarzan the Untamed (1920)

The action is commonly believed to be set during World War I (1914-1918). However since the story involves Tarzan's son as an adult (he was 18 years old in 1930 in the 4th novel, The Son Of Tarzan) and mentions him giving service in a military position for some time (in the sequel to this novel), we must assume the year is at least 1933, when Hitler began to take power at the beginnings of World War II. This would place Tarzan at about 45 years of age.

 This is the first novel to place Tarzan's plantation in British East Africa some distance from Nairobi. Up until this point he had grown up on the west African coast and joined the Waziri tribe some days travel inland. Conversely, Tarzan himself states at the end of the novel, "My home is on the west coast".

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 upon all Germans, and sets out for the battle front of the war in west 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. Upon reaching 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 Schneider to the lion. Tarzan goes on to help the British forces in various ways, including setting the lion loose in the enemy trenches. Tarzan later 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 Schneider Tarzan previously threw to the lion, and the actual commander of the force that burned his 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 species of 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) 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 an ape band. While with them he once again encounters Bertha Kircher, who has just escaped from Sergeant Usanga, leader of 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 pull 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)

Two months have passed since the conclusion of the previous novel (#7) in which Tarzan spent many months wandering about Africa wreaking vengeance upon those whom he believed brutally murdered Jane.  This places the story around 1933 in the beginning of World War II when Tarzan would be 45 years old.  At the end of that novel Tarzan learns that her death was a ruse, that she had not been killed at all.

In attempting to track Jane, Tarzan has come to a hidden valley called Pal-ul-don filled with dinosaurs, notably the savage Triceratops-like Gryfs, which, unlike their prehistoric counterparts. are carnivorous and stand 20 feet tall at the shoulder. The lost valley is also home to two different adversarial races of tailed human-looking creatures: the hairless and white skinned, city-dwelling Ho-don and the hairy and black-skinned, hill-dwelling Waz-don. Tarzan befriends a Ho-don warrior, and the Waz-don chief, actuating some uncustomary relations. In this new world Tarzan becomes a captive but so impresses his captors with his accomplishments and skills that they name him Tarzan-Jad-Guru (Tarzan the Terrible).

Having been brought there by her German captor, it turns out Jane is also being held captive in Pal-ul-don. She becomes a center-piece in a religious power struggle that consumes much of the novel until she escapes, after which her German captor becomes dependent on her due to his own lack of jungle survival skills. 

With the aid of his native allies, Tarzan continues to pursue his beloved, going through an extended series of fights and escapes to do so. In the end success seems beyond even his ability to achieve, until in the final chapter he and Jane are saved by their son Korak, who has been searching for Tarzan just as Tarzan has been searching for Jane.

Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1922/23)

The story picks up with the Clayton family, Tarzan, Jane and their son Korak, returning from their adventures in the previous novel (#8). Along the way they find an orphaned lion cub, which Tarzan takes home and trains.

Flora Hawkes, a previous housemaid of the Clayton's had overheard of Tarzan's discovery of the treasure chamber in the lost city of Opar (The Return of Tarzan, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar) and had managed to copy his map to it.  She concocted a plan to lead an expedition to collect the gold. As a contingency to discourage any local denizens from questioning them, she sought out and found a Tarzan look-alike to accompany them.

Two years passed since the Clayton family picked up their lion cub, making the year around 1935 and Tarzan would have been about 47 years old. His Greystoke estate had become financially depleted due his support of the Allies war efforts, and he concluded it was time to return to Opar for another withdrawal.

Tarzan encountered Hawkes' party, where he was drugged and ended up in the hands of the Oparians. Queen La, who had come into disfavor with the high priest, felt she had nothing to lose by escaping with Tarzan through the only unguarded route -- a path to the legendary valley of diamonds, from which no one had ever returned. There, Tarzan found a race of humans who were little better than animals in intelligence, being enslaved by a race of intelligent gorillas. With the help of his golden lion, Tarzan utilized the natives to restore La to power. Before leaving he accepted a bag of diamonds for a reward.

Meanwhile the fake Tarzan convinced Tarzan's Waziri party to take the gold from Hawkes' party while most of them were out hunting. He then buried the gold so he could retain it later.  The real Tarzan eventually confronted the fake, who managed to pilfer Tarzan's bag of diamonds. The fake was then chased by Tarzan's golden lion, but escaped into a river. He was later captured and permanently imprisoned by a local tribe. Tarzan lost the diamonds, but was able to attain the gold and return with it.

Tarzan and the Ant Men (1924)

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)

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

Tarzan and the Lost Empire (1928)

Tarzan and a young German find a lost remnant of the Roman empire hidden in the mountains of Africa. This novel is notable for the introduction of Nkima, who serves as Tarzan's monkey companion in it and a number of later Tarzan stories. It also reintroduces Muviro, first seen in Tarzan and the Golden Lion, as sub-chief of Tarzan's Waziri warriors.

Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929)

In response to a radio plea from Abner Perry, a scientist who with his friend David Innes has discovered the interior world of Pellucidar at the Earth's core, Jason Gridley launches an expedition to rescue Innes from the Korsars (corsairs), the scourge of the internal seas. He enlists Tarzan, and a fabulous airship is constructed to penetrate Pellucidar via the natural polar opening connecting the outer and inner worlds. The airship is crewed primarily by Germans, with Tarzan's Waziri warriors under their chief Muviro also along for the expedition.

In Pellucidar Tarzan and Gridley are each separated from the main force of the expedition and must struggle for survival against the prehistoric creatures and peoples of the inner world. Gridley wins the love of the native cave-woman Jana, the Red Flower of Zoram. Eventually everyone is reunited, and the party succeeds in rescuing Innes.

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)

Tarzan, his monkey friend Nkima, and Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors prevent Russian communists from looting the lost city of Opar.

Tarzan Triumphant (1931)

Backed by Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors, Tarzan faces Soviet agents seeking revenge and a lost tribe descended from early Christians practicing a bizarre and debased religious cult.

Tarzan and the City of Gold (1932)

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)

Tarzan discovers a mad scientist with a city of talking gorillas. To create additional havoc, a Hollywood film crew sets out to shoot a Tarzan movie in Africa and brings along an actor who is an exact double of the apeman himself, but is his opposite in courage and determination.

Tarzan and the Leopard Men (1935)

An amnesiac Tarzan and his monkey companion Nkima are taken by an African warrior to be his guardian spirits, and as such come into conflict with the murderous secret society of the Leopard Men.

Tarzan's Quest (1935/36)

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)

Tarzan cared little for the fate of adventurer Brian Gregory, drawn to the legendary city of Ashair by the rumor of the Father of Diamonds, the world's hugest gem. But to the ape-man the tie of friendship was unbreakable, and Paul d'Arnot's pleas moved him to agree to guide the expedition Gregory's father and sister organized for his rescue. The enigmatic Atan Thome was also obsessed with the Father of Diamonds, and planted agents in the Gregory safari to spy out its route and sabotage its efforts. Both parties reached their goal, remote Ashair... as prisoners of its priests, doomed to die in loathsome rites.

Tarzan the Magnificent (1939)

Tarzan encounters a lost race with uncanny mental powers, after which he revisits the lost cities of Cathne and Athne, previously encountered in the earlier novel Tarzan and the City of Gold. As usual, he is backed up by Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors.

Tarzan and the Foreign Legion (1947)

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)

Tarzan tracks down yet another impostor resembling him, who is under the delusion he is Tarzan.

Tarzan and the Castaways (1965)

Collection of three unconnected short stories.

#"Tarzan and the Castaways" (originally entitled "The Quest of Tarzan")
#"Tarzan and the Champion"
#"Tarzan and the Jungle Murders"

Other official works

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

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

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.

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)

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)

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 Lost Safari (1957)

Novelization authorized by the Burroughs estate, based on the screenplay of the 1957 film.  Published by Whitman Books.

Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966)

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

In the 1980s, TSR, Inc. published two Tarzan books as part of their Endless Quest gamebook series.
* EQ #26 Tarzan and the Well of Slaves (1985) by Douglas Niles ISBN 0-394-73968-X
* EQ #31 Tarzan and the Tower of Diamonds (1986) by Richard Reinsmith ISBN 0-394-74188-9

Tarzan: The Lost Adventure (1995)

Eighty-three 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)

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)

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)

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

Tarzan: The Jungle Warrior (2012)

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

Tarzan: The Savage Lands (2013)

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

Tarzan: Return to Pal-ul-don (2015)

Author Will Murray's authorized sequel to Tarzan the Terrible   

Tarzan on the Precipice (2016)

Michael A. Sanford's authorized novel covers events between Tarzan of the Apes and The Return of Tarzan.  Tarzan, after concealing his true identity of Lord Greystoke from Jane Porter, journeys from Wisconsin north to Canada and uncovers an ancient civilization of Vikings.  

Critical reception

While Tarzan of the Apes met with some critical success, subsequent books in the series received a cooler reception and have been criticized for being derivative and formulaic. The characters are often said to be two-dimensional, the dialogue wooden, and the storytelling devices (such as excessive reliance on coincidence) strain credulity. While Burroughs is not a polished novelist, he is a vivid storyteller, and many of his novels are still in print. In 1963, author Gore Vidal wrote a piece on the Tarzan series that, while pointing out several of the deficiencies that the Tarzan books have as works of literature, praises Edgar Rice Burroughs for creating a compelling "daydream figure."

Despite critical panning, the Tarzan stories have been amazingly popular. Fans love his melodramatic situations and the elaborate details he works into his fictional world, such as his construction of a partial language for his great apes.

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." He used every ploy for the purpose of painting his antagonists in simple unflattering colors.  While he commonly uses racial stereotypes of black people, his later books also contain black characters that are good-hearted, generous, and intelligent.  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."

Other ethnic groups and social classes are likewise rendered as stereotypes; this was the custom in popular fiction of the time. A Swede has "a long yellow moustache, an unwholesome complexion, and filthy nails" and Russians cheat at cards. The aristocracy (excepting the House of Greystoke) and royalty are invariably effete.

In later books, there is an attempt to portray Africans in a more realistic light. For example, in Tarzan's Quest, while the hero is still Tarzan, and the black Africans relatively primitive, they are portrayed as individuals, with good and bad traits, and the main villains have white skins. Burroughs never does get over his distaste for European royalty, though.

Burroughs' opinions, made known mainly through the narrative voice in the stories, reflect attitudes widely held in his time, which in a 21st-century context would be considered racist and sexist. The author is not especially mean-spirited in his attitudes. His heroes do not engage in violence against women or in racially motivated violence. Still, a superior-inferior relationship between races is plain and occasionally explicit.  According to James Loewen's Sundown Towns, this may be a vestige of Burroughs having been from Oak Park, Illinois, a former Sundown town (a town that forbids non-whites from living within it)--or it may very well be the fact these were common attitudes at the turn of the century.

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

After Burroughs' death a number of writers produced new Tarzan stories without the permission of his estate. In some instances, the estate managed to prevent publication of such unauthorized pastiches. The most notable exception in the United States was a series of five novels by the pseudonymous "Barton Werper" that appeared 1964-65 by Gold Star Books. As a result of legal action by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., they were taken off the market. 

The five novels in this series included: 

*Tarzan and the Silver Globe (Derby: Connecticut: New International Library/Gold Star Books, 1964)
*Tarzan and the Cave City (Derby: Connecticut: New International Library/Gold Star Books, 1964)
*Tarzan and the Snake People (Derby: Connecticut: New International Library/Gold Star Books, 1964)
*Tarzan and the Abominable Snowmen (Derby: Connecticut: New International Library/Gold Star Books, 1965)
*Tarzan and the Winged Invaders (Derby: Connecticut: New International Library/Gold Star Books, 1965)

Unauthorized works in Israel and the Arab world  

In Israel in the 1950s and early 1960s there was a thriving industry of locally produced Tarzan adventures published weekly in 24-page brochures by several competing publishing houses, none of which bothered to get any authorization from the Burroughs estate. The stories featured Tarzan in contemporary Africa, a popular theme being his fighting against the Mau Mau in 1950s Kenya and single-handedly crushing their revolt several times over. He also fought a great variety of monsters, vampires and invaders from outer space infesting the African jungles, and discovered several more lost cities and cultures in addition to the ones depicted in the Burroughs canon. Some brochures had him meet with Israelis and take Israel's side against her Arab enemies, especially Nasser's Egypt. None of the brochures ever bore a writer's name, and the various publishers - "Elephant Publishing" (), "Rhino Publishing" () and several similar names - provided no more of an address than POB numbers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. These Tarzan brochures were extremely popular among Israeli youths of the time, successfully competing with the numerous Hebrew translations of the original Tarzan novels. The Tarzan brochures faded out by the middle 1960s. 

The popularity of Tarzan in Israel had some effect on the spoken Hebrew language. As it happens, "tarzan" () is a long-established Hebrew word, translatable as "dandy, fop, coxcomb" (according to R. Alcalay's Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary of 1990). However, a word could not survive with that meaning while being identical with the name of a popular fictional character usually depicted as wearing a loincloth and jumping from tree to tree in the jungle. Since the 1950s the word in its original meaning has completely disappeared from the spoken language, and is virtually unknown to Hebrew speakers at present - though still duly appearing in dictionaries.[http://www.violetbooks.com/tarzan-israel.html Violet Books: Tarzan in Israel] .

In the 1950s new Tarzan stories were also published in Syria and Lebanon. Tarzan in these versions was a staunch supporter of the Arab cause and helped his Arab friends foil various fiendish Israeli plots.
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