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Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke

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Language
  
English

Media type
  
Print (hardcover)

ISBN
  
0-385-03886-0

Author
  
Philip José Farmer

Country
  
United States of America

3.8/5
Goodreads

Publication date
  
1972

Pages
  
312 p.

Originally published
  
1972

Publisher
  
Doubleday

Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke t0gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcRzNVs2SHQ2guoaH

Genres
  
Biography, Speculative fiction

Similar
  
Philip José Farmer books, Wold Newton books, Edgar Rice Burroughs books

Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke (1972) is an alleged biography by Philip José Farmer, alleging the life story of Edgar Rice Burroughs' literary hero Tarzan was a real person. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1972, with a paperback edition following from Popular Library in 1973 and a trade paperback edition from Bison Books in April 2006. The first British edition was published by Panther in May 1974.

The book is written on the premise that Tarzan was an actual person with original author Burroughs having written highly fictionalized and romanticized memoirs of Tarzan, which were based on Tarzan's own life stories and adventures. Farmer is then telling the "real story". Farmer examines the psychological make up of John Clayton (Tarzan's real name in the novels) and his peers, based on close readings of the various Burroughs books, accepting some of Burroughs' concepts and rejecting others in an attempt at greater verisimilitude. Among his conceits is that, since the apes described by Burroughs had a spoken language that Tarzan learned, these animals must have been "pithecanthropoids": "a group of rare hominids who are probably now extinct" and "not great apes".

The most recent edition of Tarzan Alive includes a foreword by Win Scott Eckert and an introduction by Mike Resnick along with "An Exclusive Interview with Lord Greystoke" and "Extracts from the Memoirs of "Lord Greystoke".

The text of Tarzan Alive links the characters from the Tarzan mythos to dozens of other fictional literary characters as members of Farmer's "Wold Newton family".

Editions

  • Hardback:
  • Doubleday (1972)
  • Softcover reprints:
  • Popular Library (1973 & 1976)
  • Panther Books (1974, reprinted 1975)
  • Playboy (1981)
  • Revised edition:
  • Bison Books (2006), Foreword by Win Scott Eckert; Introduction by Mike Resnick; Artwork by Jean-Paul Goude; ISBN 0-8032-6921-8, softcover, 312 pp.
  • References

    Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke Wikipedia