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HISTORY OF TARZAN
During the first
half of the twentieth century the American reading public had access to
a source of entertainment now long gone: "pulp" magazines. These magazines
were printed on cheap paper with a high pulp content (hence the name),
wrapped in garishly illustrated covers, and were brimming with every type
of fiction imaginable: westerns, romances, science fiction, tales of courtly
intrigue, stories of historical adventure, the exploits of hardy explorers
in foreign climes. Every issue brought you a handful of short stories and
the latest installment of two or three different serials, so you had to
buy the next issue (and the next) to find out how the tales ended. And
then another serial would begin ...
If you happened to be walking
by a newsstand in 1912 you might have stopped to look at the October issue
of the All-Story magazine. Perhaps the cover caught your eye: a barbarously
clad man sits astride a rampaging lion, his knife raised for the kill,
as another man (probably the lion's intended dinner) looks on in horror.
The title was as exotic as the illustration: "Tarzan of the Apes ~ A Romance
of the Jungle." Fifteen cents would have gotten you a copy.
The author bore the rather
weighty name of Edgar Rice Burroughs. And glancing at the magazine's contents
page you might have realized this story was special, because instead of
serializing this lengthy novel the All-Story's editor had decided to run
it complete in this single issue. "If you will stop and realize how many
thousands and thousands of stories an editor has to read, day in, day out,
you will be impressed when we tell you that we read this yarn at one sitting
and had the time of our young lives." So wrote Thomas Metcalf in the previous
issue's buildup to Tarzan. "It is the most exciting story we have seen
in a blue moon, and about as original as they make 'em." The All-Story
readers, and eventually the world, agreed. From this one novel sprang two
dozen more, over forty movies, hundreds of comic books, radio shows, television
programs, Tarzan toys, Tarzan gasoline, Tarzan underwear, Tarzan ice cream,
Tarzan running shoes ~ the list is virtually endless. Edgar Rice Burroughs
became one of the twentieth century's most popular authors, and Tarzan
one of the world's best-known literary characters. And all this from one
story that came close to never being written at all.
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