Science-Fiction newsletters and fan magazines began
to proliferate in the late 1930s and early 1940s, most of them amateur
publications mimeographed in purple and seeking to share enthusiasms for
the emerging genre. Most of these publications were distributed gratis
or with nominal fees, to cover mailing costs. These works frequently referred
to Burroughs as “the Grandfather of American Science Fiction,” but the
first magazine devoted exclusively to the author and his work was the Burroughs
Bulletin, founded and edited by Vernell Coriell, a circus performer
and acrobat who produced his first issue in July 1947 with the blessing
of Burroughs, then in retirement at Encino, California, after having served
as the oldest war correspondent in World War II.
Thirteen years later at Pittsburgh the charter members
of the Burroughs Bibliophiles voted to make the Burroughs Bulletin
their official magazine, with Coriell as editor. The board of directors
of the new society also voted to publish The Gridley Wave, a monthly
newsletter that Coriell had already begun publishing in December 1959 and
that would feature news of the latest Burroughs books, films, and merchandising
activity. The title of this newsletter refers to a fictional device for
sending and receiving messages to and from Earth, the Earth’s core, and
the planet Mars – a device that Burroughs’s character, Jason Gridley, discovers
in
Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (1923). Using Burroughs’s nomenclature
for other club events, the Bibliophiles christened their annual conventions
“Dum-Dums,” after the meetings of the anthropoid apes who dance by the
light of the moon in the depths of the African Jungle. Dum-Dums have been
held in many major American cities, with those in Los Angeles having attracted
the largest crowds; two conventions, in 1988 and 1997, have been convened
at Cumbria in Northern England at Greystoke Castle. In 1998 the Burroughs
Bibliophiles celebrated their thirty-seventh Dum-Dum in Baltimore, Maryland,
with Gabe Essoe, author of Tarzan of the Movies as the guest of
honor.
The greatest and best-loved illustrator of the first
editions of Burroughs’s books was Chicago artist J. Allen St. John, who
created memorable images for thirty-three first editions, beginning with
simple black-and-white headpieces for The Return of Tarzan (1915)
and ending with Tarzan’s Quest (1936). One of his most vivid paintings
that was made for Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1923) became the official
logo of the Burroughs Bibliophiles. He also designed the masthead for the
Burroughs Bulletin, and this has been used since 1962. St. John
died in 1957, three years before the Burroughs Bibliophiles was organized,
but his widow, Ellen St. John, was the club’s first guest of honor at the
Dum-Dum held in Chicago in 1962. An attractive blonde with delicate features,
she had been the model for Jane and many other Burroughs heroines in her
husband’s paintings. In 1963 the Burroughs Bibliophiles honored science-fiction
writers L. Sprague deCamp and Sam Moskowitz by presenting to each an engraved
silver bowl adorned with St. John’s “Golden Lion.” The Burroughs Bibliophiles
tested several different Golden Lion Award trophies before settling on
the current gold engraved plaque mounted on wood, in regular use since
1978. In 1984 a second annual award, a Life Achievement Award, was designed
by George T. McWhorter for long and distinguished service to the memory
of Burroughs. At the 1984 Dum-Dum in Baltimore, Coriell, known as “the
father of Burroughs fandom” and in terminal illness at the time, was the
first recipient of this award. He died less than three years later.
A list of Dum-Dum honorees through the years reads
like a Who’s Who of actors, artists, writers, and publishers involved with
Burroughs’s works. Tarzan actors include Johnny Weissmuller, Jim Pierce,
Buster Crabbe, Frank Merrill, Herman Brix, Gordon Scott, Denny Miller,
and Jock Mahoney. Twenty-five years after Weissmuller’s guest appearance
at the Boston Dum-Dum in 1971, his costar, Maureen O’Sullivan, made her
first Dum-Dum appearance in Rutland, Vermont. Other well-known Burroughs
artists who have been honored are St. John, Rex Maxon, Frank E. Schoonover,
Frank Frazetta, Hal Foster (who set the standard for Tarzan comics from
1931 to 1937 before leaving the strip to create Prince Valiant),
William Juhre, John Coleman Burroughs (son of the author and illustrator
of eleven first editions), Joe Kubert, Burne Hogarth, Boris Vallejo, Michael
Whelan, Bob Abbett, Gray Morrow, Thomas Yeates, and Joe Jusko. Authors,
editors, and publishers who have been honored include Forest J. Ackerman,
Ian Ballantine, Lester del Rey, Donald Wollheim, Richard Lupoff, Erling
B. Holtsmark, and Burroughs’s children.
The Burroughs Bibliophiles have done more than honor
famous people at conventions and publish magazines and newsletters. Their
first major project was to collect short stories that had been published
only in pulp magazines and to republish them with the permission of Edgar
Rice Burroughs, Inc., a family corporation that Burroughs founded in 1923
to protect his enterprises in book publishing, motion pictures and radio
and television shows, syndicated newspaper Tarzan strips and comic books,
and trademark merchandising of everything from Tarzan ice cream to glue,
wristwatches, knives, belts, and Tinkertoys. For many years the Burroughs
Bibliophile reprints of The Girl from Farris’s, The Efficiency
Expert,
The Scientists Revolt, Beware!, The Red Star of Tarzan,
and The Illustrated Tarzan Books, No. 1 were the only editions available
of these works.
In 1972 the Burroughs Bibliophiles began a new series
of publications under the House of Greystoke imprint. This included works
such as The Battle of Hollywood by James H. Pierce, Oldest Living Tarzan
(1978), the autobiography of the fourth actor who played Tarzan and who
married Burroughs’s daughter, Joan. Pierce and she starred together
in the 1932-1933 Tarzan radio programs sponsored by Signal Oil. The most
recent House of Greystoke publication is The Edgar Rice Burroughs Memorial
Collection: A Catalog
(1991) by McWhorter, who donated his collection
of 70,000 volumes to the University of Louisville Library, where he is
curator.
In promoting the image of Burroughs as a master storyteller,
trendsetter, and original thinker, it was necessary for the Burroughs Bibliophiles
to find prominent spokesmen. Such advocates have been L. Sprague deCamp,
who wrote an introduction to the 1986 Easton Press edition of Burroughs’s
first novel, A Princess of Mars; Ian Ballantine and Lester del Rey,
whose reprints of Burroughs’s works in Ballantine paperbacks are collectors’
items; and Ray Bradbury, whose introduction to Irwin Porges’s biography
Edgar
Rice Burroughs, the Man Who Created Tarzan (1975) is a classic accolade.
Sam Moskowitz – Burroughs scholar, editor, publisher, teacher, literary
agent and pulp-magazine historian – was the first to anthologize Burroughs
in the mainstream press and frequently contributed scholarly articles to
the Burroughs Bulletin. Erling B. Holtsmark, chairman of the Classics
Department at the University of Iowa, is the author of two major studies
of Burroughs, including Tarzan and Tradition (1981), which explores
the classic Greek and Latin roots of Burroughs’s writing. Leigh Bracket
has acknowledged Burroughs’s inspiration for her own Martian concepts in
writing science fiction, and Henry Hardy Heins’s Golden Anniversary
Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1964) has become a standard reference
for auction houses and antiquarian bookdealer catalogues. Astronomer Carl
Sagan, primatologist Jane Goodall, actor Ronald Reagan, and comedienne
Carol Burnett have also been unexpected spokespeople.
In recent years members of the Burroughs Bibliophiles
have brought increasing public attention to the society. They have served
as authorities for interviews or as writers of articles for magazines and
newspapers, and they have participated in documentaries such as Tarzan:
The Legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the 1997 television biography produced
by the Arts and Entertainment network and hosted by Peter Graves, and In
Search of Tarzan, the American Movie Classics documentary televised
during AMC’s film festival of thirty-two vintage Tarzan movies. Another
1997 documentary, Moi, Tarzan, is being shown in many European countries,
where the Tarzan myth is even more popular than in the United States.
The Walt Disney Studios are producing an animated Tarzan
movie due for release in theaters by late spring 1999, and the commercial
success of this movie will most likely add to the merchandising of Tarzan
products. In summer 1997 the Palmdale Playhouse in California staged the
premiere of You Lucky Girl!, an unpublished play that Burroughs
wrote in 1927 and in which his daughter Joan was to star. In 1998 Donald
M. Grant published this play, with illustrations by Ned Dameron, along
with “Marcia of the Doorstep,” a story about a foundling that Burroughs
wrote but could not market in 1924. McFarland published in December 1996
a much-needed update to the Heins Golden Anniversary Bibliography
by Burroughs Bibliophile Robert Zeuschner, a professor at Pasadena City
College. Publication plans for new Burroughs Bibliophiles books and catalogues,
including pictorial manuals for Burroughs collectibles and a complete history
of the Tarzan radio shows, have been announced.
The Burroughs Bibliophiles is an international organization
with headquarters at the Burroughs Memorial Collection in Louisville, Kentucky,
where the magazine and newsletter are published and where the board of
directors makes plans. Active regional chapters have been established in
Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Chicago; Atlanta; Cleveland; and Baltimore
– as well as in the states of Michigan, Florida, and Arizona and in countries
such as Holland, France, Germany, and Australia. Some of the chapters publish
regional newsletters, such as The Panthan Newsletter of the Washington,
D.C., National Capital “Panthans.” During the last fifty years more than
two hundred Burroughs fan magazines have appeared, also with titles incorporating
recognizable Burroughs-inspired nomenclature such as Amtorian, Barsoomian,
Jasoomian, Oparian, Erbania, Tarzine, Burroughs Newsbeat, and Erbivore.
Some, such as the Barsoomian Blade and ERBzin-e, have appeared
on the Internet.
For more information on the Burroughs
Bibliophiles
www.burroughsbibliophiles.com
