Tarzan of the Apes by BURROUGHS, EDGAR RICE - 1914

Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1914. First Edition, First Binding without the acorn on the spine. This is the rarest state (for many years unrecorded) where in this copy the title page is a cancel (the title page is mounted on a stub where a leaf has been removed and replaced) with the correct Chicago - A.C. McClurg 1914 imprint on the title page and the printer’s name appears in a single line in gothic type with the imprint on the copyright page. This version was unknown to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s various bibliographers over the years Heins, Zeuschner, and only revealed in 2002 in the revised and corrected version of L.W. Currey’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors: A Bibliography of First Printings of Their Fiction and Selected Nonfiction, page 75 (only issued on CD rom). Currey describes the copy he discovered as “unique”, however, in recent years, several copies of this state have turned up, making it the rarest of the several states of the book. Since the title page is a cancel replacement by the publisher it might logically follow that his variant replacing another that it is implied that an early incorrect or somehow defective title page created by the printer. A good copy with the hinges cracked, flaking of letterting to the spine, wear at the cloth extremities mainly at the bottom of spine. used and read copy of a rarity. The character of Tarzan has appeared in Burroughs’s own sequels, movies, television, comic books, a successful comic strip and spin-off products. Burroughs was the first writer of fiction to shrewdly exploit his creation in a manner which is now considered business as usual. As a matter of fact, Tarzan was the first literary character to be registered as a trademark. He created his own publishing and marketing company, E.R.B. Inc., located in Tarzana, California.