Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote one of the most famous stories of African adventure in his Tarzan of the Apes.  It was first published in The All-Story magazine in October 1912.  Although the theme of a wild boy living with animals in the jungle was most notably written by Kiplingin his two Jungle Books (seven stories and seven poems published in 1894, followed by eight stories and eight poems in 1895) the tales take place in colonial India rather than Africa.  Burroughs had never visited Africa, so his background information came from books or his own imagination.  Indeed, Holtsmark has written  persuasively about his jungle as a "psychological landscape" rather than as a place in the real world. (Holtsmark, 7-12).

 
The first great African adventure story was written by H. Rider Haggard, followed by many other African tales based upon his own personal experiences beginning in 1875 when he went out to Natal with Sir Henry Bulwer.  His first published work was a non-fiction study of Cetewayo and His White Neighbors published in 1882.

"Although many soldiers, travelers and hunters wrote about their experiences in Africa there were surprisingly few novels set there.  .  .. King Solomon's Mines was the first African story to find a wide readership (Higgins 84).

H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines of 1885 was wildly successful. With its publication Haggard became the talk of the literary world.  The story was written in six weeks on a dare by his brother who bet him he could not write anything to match Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1882).  Stevenson himself wrote Haggard a series of letters of praise mixed with criticism, ending with the postscript, "How about a deed of partnership."  He could ask for no higher accolade. (Pocock, 62-63).

In 1872 Henry Morton Stanley published his "How I Found Livingstone in Central Africa".  It was a phenomenal success, selling by ten of thousands and was was into its third edition in a single month.  Although this was not a work of fiction, the historic events he described seemed almost fantastic, the Mirambo war, the ordeal with the Ha, the crossing of the Malagarazi and the meeting with Livingston, the saint of Victorian explorers.  (McLynn, 224).  This book was followed by Through the Dark Continent in 2 vols. in 1878, the account of his crossing the entire continent, concluding with his epic trip down the Congo river.  In his bibliography, McLynn lists 53 notable book titles on African exploration available in English before 1911.  Of course, there were hundreds more, but his list is interesting and indicates some of the many titles available to Burroughs.  Atamian thinks that two books were especially relevant in the creation of Tarzan of the Apes, namely, Paul Du Chaillu's Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (1861) and J.W. Buell's Heroes of the Dark Continent (1889). (Atamian, 22).

The influence of Stanley's work is evident in ERB's Tarzan series. However, Haggard's Allan Quatermain is usually associated with the big game hunter, Selous, whose A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa of 1881 attracted much attention.  "It is unlikely that the book was unknown to Haggard, whose interest in Africa was constantly refreshed by the purchase and thorough study of a large number of non-fiction books about it" (Higgins, 72).  Of course, Haggard had his own African experiences as a source for his writing as well.  The following list records Haggard's 22 African books which would have been available to Burroughs before his writing of Tarzan of the Apes.

1882 - Cetywayo and His White Neighbors: or, Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal
1885 - The Witch's Head - a dramatic description of Isandhlwana
1885 - King Solomon's Mines
1887 - Jess -  A love story against the backdrop of the Boer War.
1887 - Allan Quatermain
1887 - She
1888 - Maiwa's Revenge
1889 - Cleopatra
1889 - Allan's Wife And Other Tales
1892 - Nada the Lily
1894 - The People of the Mist
1896 - The Wizard
1898 - Allan The Hunter.  A Tale of Three Lions  (Collected in "Allan's Wife and Other Tales.")
1899 -  Swallow.  A Tale of the Great Trek
1899 - The Last Boer War.  Actually an abridged version of his first book.
1900 - Black Heart and White Heart and Other Stories
1905 - The Return of She: Ayesha
1906 - Benita.  An African Romance.  An adventure tale involving clairvoyance and an African treasure.  The New York edition was titled "The Spirit of Bambatse."
1909 - The Lady of the Heavens   A competent telling of how yet another white woman is welcomed as a goddess by an African tribe.  Called "The Ghost Kings" in England.
1908 - The Yellow God.  An Idol of Africa.
1910 -  Morning Star.  A romance of ancient Egypt.
1910 -  Queen Sheba's Ring

Bibliography Atamian, Sarkis, The Origin of Tarzan:  The Mystery of Tarzan's Creation Solved, Publication Consultants, 1997.
Higgins, D.S.  Rider Haggard:  A Biography, Stein and Day, 1983.
Holtsmark, Erling, B.  Tarzan and Tradition:  Classical Myth in Popular Literature, Greenwood Press, 1981.
McLynn, Frank, Stanley:  The Making of an African Explorer, Scarborough House, 1990.
Pocock, Tom, Rider Haggard and the Lost Empire:  A Biography, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993.