Audiobook · read by volunteers
Return of Tarzan
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950)
Read by Ralph Snelson · 26 chapters · 9 h 11
About the book
Tarzan has given up the woman he loves and left the jungle behind. Now, rootless and restless, he sails for Europe to visit his friend Paul d’Arnot, and almost at once he is caught up in intrigue on the ocean liner. A scheming Russian, a beautiful mysterious countess and a tangle of old grudges draw him from Paris to the sands of North Africa, and eventually back to the dense forest where he was raised. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s sequel to Tarzan of the Apes, published in 1915, is a headlong adventure with fights, chases, disguises, hidden treasure and exotic settings. It is also a book of its time, with attitudes and assumptions that modern listeners will meet with caution. Ralph Snelson reads all twenty-six chapters in a vigorous voice. A classic of pulp adventure for fans of the genre and for anyone curious about the roots of the character.
Introduction
Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in 1875 and died in 1950. He turned to writing after a number of jobs and set-backs, and became one of the most successful authors of adventure and fantasy in the early twentieth century. He created Tarzan, the English lord raised by apes, as well as the Barsoom series set on Mars.
The Return of Tarzan was serialised in a magazine before it appeared as a book in 1915, and it picks up where Tarzan of the Apes left off. Having given up his hopes of marrying Jane Porter, Tarzan feels adrift and crosses to Europe to see his friend Paul d’Arnot. Trouble finds him on the voyage itself, and the story moves quickly from there.
Like many adventure stories of its time, the novel depends on coincidence, disguise and larger-than-life characters. It also reflects the racial and colonial attitudes of the early twentieth century, and some of its portrayals of African peoples are offensive by present standards. Readers and listeners today often approach Tarzan with both fondness for the energy of the stories and an awareness of the limits of their world view.
The recording has twenty-six chapters, opening with the affair on the liner, and runs for around nine hours and a quarter. It is read by volunteer Ralph Snelson. For those who like old-fashioned adventure and want to see where the legend of Tarzan took shape, it makes a lively listen, best taken with some context in mind.
Public domain
Edgar Rice Burroughs died in 1950: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text