Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1914) hardcover book

Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan of the Apes

New York: A. L. Burt, 1914. Book club edition. Hardcover. Small 8vo. Green cloth binding. 401 pp., exclusive of appended four page advertisement supplement. Terrible condition. This is an altogether unprepossessing copy with defects aplenty in every aspect of its physique. Boards are extensively rubbed with rippling creases along exterior joints and erosion at the head of the spine. Front hinge starting. Title page severed horizontally exposing an open tear with bottom third material excised. Upper forecorner of page 377 likewise detached. Textblock edges well worn. And those wishing for a goodly amount of smudging on their book pages won't be disappointed here either. This book has the physical integrity of a zodiacal astrolabe made of compressed dust and the aesthetic credentials of the dog-faced baboon.

ON THE OTHER HAND, this book's facsimile first-edition dust jacket is almost blameworthy for its lusty envy-inspiring presentation of leafy grandeur--with only as much deprecation as its vintage would suggest. Placed on a shelf in full-view of urbane party guests, this book is liable to arouse a furor of approbation which even the most pompous aesthetes from the Ford Madox Ford school of criticism would be helpless to contradict, and yes of course it would as well secure its owner a prestigious space for his or her name in any cosmopolitan blue book. Only a Dogberry of the most desultory temper would hesitate to buy this book and if that's you then I give up.