First Edition Identifiers

This particular title was printed 7 times with minor changes by Macaulay from 1923 to 1930. All the editions are bound in RED cloth although the textures differ. All Macaulay printings have erroneously spelled “Tarzan” on the title page as “Tarzon”. The first 4 printings have green lettering on the cover and spine whereas the last 3 printings have black lettering on the cover and spine. This title was not reprinted by Grosset & Dunlap.

The first printing of this title has a horizontal line texture on the cloth (see photo below) and had two different captioned illustrated frontispieces inserted indiscriminately. The caption says in part — “Only a camera man and myself are here” he said — where the words “he said” are omitted on one of the frontispieces. Many collector publications list these two variants as two separate editions but this has been proven otherwise as the following explains.

In identifying which state was printed first, both Zeuchner and Heins’ (updated 2001 bibliography) rely on William Ross’ (noted ERB collector) comparitive study which identifies the various states by evidence of printing plate wear. However for the first two states there is not any printing plate wear noted.

As I owned both variants, I did a comparative study and found a printing defect on page 319 showing a white space in the letter R in the word “discovered”. With the assistance of other ERB collectors it was determined that the errata appears on both book variants, and, more importantly there are copies of both book variants that do not show the errata! Also, all later editions do not show this errata, the letter R is normal, the errata is confined to the first printing exclusively. This printing defect was likely caused by lint or glue on the printer plate. The only plausible explanation is there was a single printing and the variant frontispieces were indiscriminately inserted. It is unknown why there are two frontispieces or why both continued to be used in latter printings.

The first state dust jacket has a black box on the spine with “The Macaulay Company, New York” inset into it, whereas all the other states omit the black box and include a coat of arms with an “M” in it and a bird atop of the shield and the words “Carpe Diem” in a banner below the shield.

The first state dust jacket has been verified to be included on both variant printings. It was commonly assumed the first state dust jacket was only included with the “he said” variant however it’s been documented on both variants. The primary example of this was an ebay offering of unsold books from a store that had them in storage since the 1920’s. In this lot of unsold books were 3 first edition copies of “The Monster Men”, two copies of “The Outlaw of Torn”, and one copy of “The Girl from Hollywood” which had a 1st state dust jacket but lacked the words “he said” on the copyright page. Since these books were stored away having never been sold it is clear that this printing also had a first state dust jacket.

More descriptive information of the latter printings are found below the cover photo. Photo below is of the first state of the first edition book.

Photographs

The third and fourth printing have a pebbled or bubbled texture as shown on the book to the right and were printed in 1926 & 1927.

The 2nd printing was printed in 1924 and is bound in smooth fine grain red cloth instead and the lettering on page 9 shows some deterioration due to worn printing plates. The cloth on the 3rd printing has a bubbled or pebbled texture and the caption includes the words “he said”. As expected, there is deterioration of various letters on page 9. The fourth printing is like the third except the words “he said” are excluded, and, there is also deterioration on the copyright page in addition to page 9.

The fifth and sixth printings also lack the words “he said” on the frontispiece, and, the seventh printing does not even include a frontispiece. These last three printings all have black lettering on the spine and cover. Otherwise the sixth & seventh printings are the same as the fifth’s but shows additional type deterioration on page 195.

The dust jackets also differ somewhat between printings. The first dust jacket has “The Macaulay Company” printed in white letters inside a square black box. The box has the corner tips cut-off to form an octagon type box. Later dust jackets just have “Macaulay” printed at the bottom. There are additional differentiations between the later dust jacket issues that are not described here.