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Series · 24 books

Tarzan

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote roughly twenty-four canonical Tarzan novels between 1912 and his death in 1950, with two of them published posthumously in the 1960s. The series follows John Clayton, the orphaned son of Lord and Lady Greystoke, who is raised by the great ape Kala in the West African jungle after his parents die in a marooned cabin. He learns to read English from his dead parents' books, takes the ape name Tarzan, and eventually meets and marries the American Jane Porter. The novels follow him across Africa, into the lost cities of Opar, Pal-ul-don, Cathne, Athne, Nimmr, Ashair, and others, into Pellucidar at the Earth's core, into the Pacific Theatre of the Second World War, and through a long family saga involving his son Korak and Jane. The recommended reading order is publication order. The series essentially established the modern jungle-hero template that has been imitated for over a century. The colonial-era attitudes in many of the novels have not aged well, and readers may want to choose modern critical editions where available.

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