Tarzan may have been a first hardcover edition, too – the Boy’s Own Annuals were pre-WWI (I still have a couple of them) so it might have been from that same era. It was on our family bookshelf, a green hardcover beside a few aging Boy’s Own, Punch annuals, and some other old British books. I don’t know how old I was when I first read Tarzan, perhaps 10 or 11. After hearing these two audiobooks, I thought I should share it again here, albeit somewhat edited and updated.
This month I have books 2,3 and 4 burned to CD and ready to play. Back in 2007, on my old blog, I wrote the following piece about ERB and my lifelong love of ERB and his tales. Last month I manged to hear A Princess of Mars, the first of the series, written in 1912, and the fifth book, Chessmen of Mars (1922). Librivox has many, and some are quire well read. I recently downloaded several of his novels in audiobook form, to listen to on my visits to my mother, in her nursing home or on my iPhone when walking the dogs in the park. I periodically read a Burroughs’ tale just to remember the pleasures of reading him. I still have the entire set of Ace paperbacks from the 1960s or 70s on my bookshelves.
#Burroughs barsoom series
I have read that opening – indeed the whole series of his 11 Martian novels – several times. So opens the fifth book in the prolific Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ Barsoom series, The Chessmen of Mars. With a wooden stick she tapped upon the bronze disc, lightly, and presently the summons was answered by a slave girl, who entered, smiling, to be greeted similarly by her mistress. A scarf of silken gossamer crossing over one shoulder was wrapped about her body her black hair was piled high upon her head. Her carriage was that of health and physical perfection-the effortless harmony of faultless coordination.
Tara of Helium rose from the pile of silks and soft furs upon which she had been reclining, stretched her lithe body languidly, and crossed toward the center of the room, where, above a large table, a bronze disc depended from the low ceiling.