My name is Bruce Wood. The first exposure
I had to Edgar Rice Burroughs came at the
age of 6 when my antique-collecting father brought home a first edition
of Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. I was too
young to read the book, but my cousin read it to me. By the time I was
11 I had mastered reading skills well enough to read it for myself. This
I did - many times. By the time I was 13 the book was falling apart from
constant re-reading.
When ACE Books
published At the Earth's Core in 1962 I was
already haunting the local news stands searching for science fiction. I
discovered the book immediately, and recognizing the authors' name, I decided
to give it a try. At The Earth's Core
was
soon followed by The Moon Maid and then Pellucidar
and The Moon Men. I was hooked. From that
point on I acquired and read everything I could find by Edgar
Rice Burroughs.
Unfortunately for me, there were few paperbacks
available at that time. But fortunately for me, the foreword to The
Moon Men was written by Camille "Caz" Cazedessus, Jr., publisher
of ERBdom. Upon receiving my first issue,
#5, of this unequalled fanzine I started buying titles in hardback. At
first I only purchased those books which were not available in paper. Being
only 14 at the time I had to settle for low grade copies - after all, who
could afford the sum of $600 for a first edition of Tarzan
of the Apes even if it did include a jacket? (Oh! for those days
again!)
But after 5 years of collecting, my uncle
called and I spent 26 months in Southeast Asia, effectively putting a hold
on these activities. What with the real-life adventure I was living at
the time and a marriage almost immediately after the war, I was absent
from the hobby for about 10 years. In the late 1970's I came back only
to discover that my favorite source had dried up - Caz was no longer active,
having sold his own stuff about 1978 and given up publishing ERBdom.
I began to search the rare book stores.
Ouch! Things were hard to find and when
they did show up the price was outrageous! Imagine $20-$25 for a G?D in
jacket. Well, I bit the bullet and paid the price. After all, I was single
again and working as an electrical design engineer for General Motors,
so I could afford the books even if I didn't like the price. However progress
was slow since the books were scarce even with funds now available for
their purchase.
Then my big break came. One of the book
stores offered to go into a partnership with me to purchase an entire collection
from a collector who was liquidating. I was to have first choice of the
40 year collection. When the dust cleared my collection was as complete
as I thought it would ever become.
This is me circa
1985 holding my first edition of Tarzan of the Apes.
It is the printing with no acorn on the spine. My collection at this
time included every first edition. Of these, all books had a jacket excepting
the McClurg editions.
I did have five McClurg titles in jacket, but mostly the McClurg editions
were backed up by a G?D in jacket.
Therefore I had a copy of all jackets.
By this time the Mcclurg editions in jacket
were selling for $600 to $800 a pop, except "Tarzan
of the Apes" which had reached a price over $2000, and I had decided
there was nothing else to buy as long as I considered myself sane. I continued
reading the books, mostly the paperback editions. Nearly every title was
now available in paper and it was almost criminal to even handle my jacketed
firsts, let alone actually read them. So my collection just sat
on the bookshelf, taking up space, not being read, and constantly reminding
me that I might as well be looking at a $10,000 bill sitting there.
In 1988 the fatal thought struck - why
not sell off the books, not one of which had been even opened for 5 or
6 years. And so I committed what I now consider the greatest blunder of
my 52 years and sold out. More than any single event of my life, not even
excluding the ill-fated marriage of the 70's, I wish I had that decision
to make over again. But wish in one hand, as they say, and spit in the
other and see which fills first.
Now I am collecting again. This time I
am restricting myself to the reprint editions. I am shooting for reprints
in jacket but firsts are out of the question. At current prices 5 or 6
McClurg jackets would cost me more than I got for my entire collection
in 1988. And that brings you up to date on my collecting activities, except...
Employing the methods of Burroughs
himself in Jungle Tales of Tarzan, I will
take you back again to the 1963-64 era. In the mid 1960's I became much
interested in the Pellucidar map and started
adding to it by reading the books carefully and trying to determine the
locations of different areas from text references. It was about this time
I discovered the fanzines - ERBdom from Caz,
Erbania
from Pete Ogden, The Burroughs Reader from
Dale Broadhurst, and the little known Thuria
that was distributed by Larry Taylor in Kent, Ohio. Kent soon after became
well known because of the unfortunate incident resulting in the student
deaths.
When I was 15, Larry accepted a rather simple
'Pellucidar Glossary' from me because he was a little hard up for material.
I figured that if Larry would publish me maybe I could get an Atlas of
maps published. But even then I had big ideas. Larry's fanzine was produced
on a spirit duplicator which didn't look as good to me as The
Burroughs Reader, which was mimeographed. Of course the photo offset
ERBdom
was even better, but I wasn't brave enough to try for the big time.
Anyway, correspondence with Dale resulted in
a deal where I paid a part of the printing costs for an issue which contained
my expanded map of
Pellucidar and Dales' redraw
of Amtor. I received 150 copies of these maps
which were to be included in a "Burroughs Altas". The accompanying text
even called them "Burroughs Atlas Maps". But there were two problems:
1. I wanted the "Atlas" format to be
8.5x11 but Dale had not informed me that he was reducing the format of
BR?T to 5x7
Bruce
was a valuable member of ERB fandom -- an honest, down-to-earth person
whose sudden death sent shockwaves through the entire ERB community. Most
of us were not aware of his recurring illness that he said originated in
SE Asia when he was in the service. It recurred several times a year, a
malaria-like malady which gave him bouts of nausea for days. This was probably
a factor leading to his early demise.
