Tarzan the Untamed

Tarzan the Untamed is a book by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the seventh in his series of twenty-four books about the title character Tarzan. It was originally published as two separate stories serialized in different pulp magazines; "Tarzan the Untamed" (also known as "Tarzan and the Huns") in Redbook from March to August, 1919, and "Tarzan and the Valley of Luna" in All-Story Weekly from March to April 1920. The two stories were combined under the title of the first in the first book edition, published in 1920 by A. C. McClurg. In order of writing, the book follows Jungle Tales of Tarzan, a collection of short stories about the ape-man's youth. Chronologically, it follows Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar.




Tarzan the Untamed was one of Burroughs' most controversial novels. The controversy stemmed from his blanket portrayal of Germans as stereotypical, unredeemable villains, one that was also extended to his contemporary science fiction novel The Land That Time Forgot. This portrayal, while perhaps understandable in wartime, ultimately ruined the market for his writing in Germany, where the character of Tarzan had formerly been quite popular. Burroughs' later introduction of heroic Germans into his subsequent novels Tarzan and the Lost Empire, Tarzan at the Earth's Core and Back to the Stone Age did little to repair the damage to his reputation there.




Previous novels in the series had dealt primarily with the ape-man's own affairs, while Tarzan the Untamed and later ones (beginning with Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle) would cast him as a protector and enabler of others.




Tarzan the Untamed introduced the lost civilization of Xuja, foreshadowing a pattern in later Tarzan novels. Of the six books before Tarzan the Untamed, two featured the lost city of Opar, but otherwise the series centered on Tarzan's adventures in his natural environment, the jungle. After Tarzan the Untamed, lost civilizations in remote parts of Africa became common in the novels. Such places tended to consist of two warring cities or kingdoms. (wikipedia.org)