Creator
Before he
penned his first yarn, Edger Rich Burroughs had a very American legacy.
His family descend from Edmund Rich, one of the English puritans that moved to
the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the mid-17th century. Many later
descendants fought in the American Revolution. Edger can claim to have seven
cousins that were signers of the Declaration of Independence, including President
John Adams.
But it
took a long time for greatest to come to his life. Initially he wanted to join
the military, graduating from Michigan Military Academy in 1895. But he failed
the entrance exam for West Point. He did get enlisted, but a heart problem
diagnosis forced him to discharge in 1897. After that he had a varied resume. A
cowboy in Idaho, a gold miner in Oregon, a railroad policeman in Salt Lake
City, and an owner of several failed businesses.
It was in
1911, after seven years as a pencil-sharpener wholesaler, Edger began his long
lustrous writing career. He had a lot of spare time and used it to read
pulp-fiction magazines. While doing so, he thought….
“...if
people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines,
that I could write stories just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had
never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as
entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in
those magazines.” – Edger Rich Burroughs, “How I Wrote the Tarzan Books,” The
World Magazine Sunday supplement (27th October 1929)
“Norman
Bean’s” first story, Under the Moons of Mars, was serialized in All-Story
Magazine in 1912.
Inspiration/Conception
Edgar is
very well-read man, with a large personal library of over 1,100 volumes by the
time he died. So, he had a lot of possible influences. However, he was coy when
he talked about the sources of his inspiration, thinking that keeping that a
mystery would intrigue his readers’ curiosity.
Edgar has
admitted reading Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894).
In 1937
Rudolph Altrocchi, professor of Italian of the University of California,
Berkley, asked him about this by letter. His response said…
“I
believe that (the Tarzan concept) may have originated in my interest in
mythology and the story of Romulus and Remus. I also recall having read many
years ago the story of a sailor who was shipwrecked on the coast of Africa and
who adopted and consorted with great apes to such an extent that when he was
rescued a she-ape followed him into the surf and threw a baby after him. Then,
of course, I read Kipling; so that it probably was a combination of all three
of these…”
Introduced
to our world
Readers
were introduced to Tarzan in the October 1912 issue of The All-Story.
This first story was published by A.C. McClurg as Edger’s first novel, Tarzan of the Apes, on 17th June
1914.
Tarzan is a feral child of English aristocrats raised by apes in a jungle in Africa in the 19th century, who later met other humans, including his future partner Jane (from Victorian England). Various adventures, involving animals and tribes, ensue. Tarzan is a character that has been in our collective imagination for so long that our current idea of who is Tarzan (and Jane) are different to what he (and she) was originally, when Edger Rich Burroughs first penned him (and her) back in 1912. This is due to the stories many adaptations over the years in books, comics, film, radio and TV. With each adaptation comes a modification to the story by the adaptor. These could be due to the nature of the medium it’s been adapted to. Or the adaptor’s interpretation of the story’s themes. Or the adaptor wanting to explore a part that was barely touched in previous adaptions. Or changes in the audience’s culture that makes the previous adaptation or the original story look questionable. This nibble will explore Edgar’s original version and compare it to later adaptations.
Appearance
“Tarzan was not beefy but was light and graceful and well-muscled,” Edgar wrote to film producer Pliny Craft regarding casting Tarzan. “It is true that in the stories I often speak of Tarzan as a ‘giant ape-man’ but that is because I am rather prone to use superlatives. My conception of him is a man a little over six feet tall and built more like a panther than an elephant.”
In Tarzan and the City of Gold he was described as “Tall, magnificently proportioned, muscled more like Apollo than like Hercules, garbed only in a lion skin, he presented a splendid figure of primitive manhood that suggested more, perhaps, the demigod of the forest than it did man.”
Skin tanned by a lifetime in the tropical sun.
Stature of a nobleman.
Tarzan has always been clean shaven, scraping his beard off with his finely honed knife and chopping his thick black hair off into a manageable coif.
Edger’s version has a large scar across his
forehead, which blazes red when he’s angry.
“Tar-ZAN”
“Tarzan” is ape language for “white skin.” Edger
had been asked many times how to pronounce his name. His answer can be summed
up as (in his own words) “pronounce it the way it sounds best to you and you
will have it as correct as anyone.” As most people today are most familiar with
the film adaptations, the most common pronunciation is the one created by
Maureen O’Sullivan in the Johnny Weissmuller films – “tar-ZAN.” “Their
pronunciation of Tarzan is their own. I don’t give a damn what they call him as
long as their checks come regularly.”
Costume
Tarzan wears a doeskin loincloth, although leopard skin and lion hide have been mentioned. His costume was a problem in early film adaptations, in a time when men can be arrested for been topless on a beach. Elmo Lincoln bared his chest in the first film, but later actors wore a modesty strap – until Johnny Weissmuller came along. His lack of self-consciousness when topless was one reason he got the role. Its thanks to him, it became fashionable for men to bare their chests.
Tarzan has grey eyes, like most of Edgar’s main characters. He never explained why, but he does describe them as “steel,” “cold,” “piercing,” “cool,” and “eyes that can reflect the light of a summer sea or the flashing steel of a rapier.”
His usual weapon on hand are his dad’s hunting
knife, a rope, a spear, and a bow and arrow.
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