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 ERBzine, have appeared on the Internet. For more information
on the Burroughs Bibliophiles or for subscriptions to the Burroughs
Bulletin, write to:
George T. McWhorter, Curator,
Edgar Rice Burroughs Collection,
Ekstrom Library,
University of Louisville,
Louisville KY 40292, U.S.A.;
call (502) 852-8729;
or send E-mail to:
gtmcwh01@louisville.edu
Schedule for Future Bulletin
Issues
2008
#73 I Am A Barbarian
#74 Tarzan and
the "Foreign Legion"
#75 Marcia of
the Doorstep
#76 You Lucky
Girl!
2009
#77 Minidoka
BB#78: Forgotten
Tales of Love and Murder
BB#79: Tarzan: The Lost Adventure
