The Son of Tarzan was serialized in All-Story Weekly from December 1915 to January 1916, then published in book form by A.C. McClurg & Co. in 1917. The novel shifts the franchise’s focus to the next generation: Jack Clayton, son of Tarzan and Jane, who has been raised in England with no knowledge of his father’s jungle past.
When young Jack encounters Akut — an ape who had been Tarzan’s companion — at a traveling sideshow, something atavistic awakens in the boy. He runs away to Africa with Akut, and the novel tracks his transformation into Korak the Killer — a jungle warrior who recapitulates his father’s trajectory from civilized child to savage man. Along the way, he rescues Meriem, a young French girl who has been kidnapped and raised among Arabs, and the two grow up together in the jungle in a conscious parallel to the Tarzan-Jane story.
The novel raises the nature-versus-nurture question explicitly: is Tarzan’s affinity for the jungle something that can be inherited? Is the “call of the wild” genetic? Burroughs’s answer is unambiguously yes — Jack’s blood pulls him toward the jungle just as surely as it once drew his father. This hereditarian logic was entirely conventional for popular fiction of 1915, though it sits uncomfortably with contemporary understanding of genetics and behavior.
Collecting The Son of Tarzan
First edition (A.C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1917): Red cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $800–$2,000
- Very good/very good: $300–$800
- Good: $100–$300