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Volume 2834
THE DANTON BURROUGHS TARZANA ARCHIVE
Presents
The 1912 Business Correspondence between
Edgar Rice Burroughs
and
Thomas Metcalf of All-Story Magazine
Part III
.
All-Story - January 1913 - The Gods of Mars 1/5
All-Story - January 1913 - 
The Gods of Mars - First installment of five
ERB C.H.A.S.E.R Biblio Entry

Dust Jacket for later
hardcover edition
Read the eText
Click for larger letter images
September 20, 1912
Dear Mr. Metcalf

Shall be on the lookout for Mr. Brown - and if he don't treat me right I'll indict him. I'm on the Grand Jury. Which, by the way, has rather interfered with my work all along the line - especially golf.

Am glad your readers liked Tarzan. One of them wrote me a very nice letter. In this connection I am wondering if you destroy letters of this kind when you are through with them. If so might I have them instead! I have an idea that I could show them to publishers to whom I might wish to submit my Mss for the book part of it. You can see my medical mail order training outcropping here. "I have read one of Old Doctor Burroughs' stories and now have hair growing on the bottom of my feet."

Let me thank you for the very acceptable bull con you handed me via the Table Talks - you are a real artist.

About a sequel to Tarzan. Candidly I don't think it would be a go, although I have a really bully foundation in mind for one. These sequel things usually fall flat. I'll be glad to think it over, however, and later if  you decide that it will be wise to try it I'll tackle it. The idea I have in mind will require a bit more study of conditions in the slave and ivory belt that I have made up to the present - I wouldn't want to make any very foolish blunders.

Speaking of sequels, I have the second John Carter tale nearly completed. I can't tell you anything about it because I am no judge. I think it will prove as readable as the first. I doubt if I can kill Dejah Thoris though. You know I told you that I was purely mercenary in so far as my work is concerned, but when it comes to the characters I find that I develop a real affection for them - funny, isn't it?

Cordially,
Edgar Rice Burroughs (sig)

2008 Park avenue
.
  

October 2nd 1912
Mr. Thomas Newell Metcalf
All Story Magazine, New York.

Dear Mr. Metcalf:

Here is Mss of THE GODS OF MARS, the magazine rights to which I desire to sell.

Am enclosing three letters I have received to TARZAN OF THE APES from readers of All Story. I though they might interest you. Please return them to me.

Mr. Brown did not show up. Do you k now if he came to Chicago?

About a score of readers here have threatened my life unless I promised to write a sequel to Tarzan - shall I?

Yours very cordially,
Edgar Rice Burroughs (sig)

2008 Park avenue

.
  

October 9, 1912
Mr. Thomas Newell Metcalf,
New York City, New York

Dear Mr. Metcalf:

Thanks for clipping from "World". We're getting quite famous. The pinnacle however remains to be attained in the naming of a race horse after Tarzan.

How did you like The Gods of Mars? I forgot to name the chapters for you as I fully intended to do. Shall I?

I was talking with a commission man here last night whom you would never imagine read damphool stories but he had recently finished Under the Moons of Mars and was very keen for the sequel.

Hope that I shall hear from you soon - this suspense is awful.

Yours very truly,

Edgar Rice Burroughs (sig)
.
THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY
175 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
T.N.M.

Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs,
    2008 Park Avenue,
        Chicago, Ills.

New York, Oct. 11, 1912
Dear Burroughs:

                                    "The Gods of Mars" will go through all right and if events are highly favorable you will possibly receive a check next Thursday. I think the story is very entertaining. I noticed with considerable sinking of heart that you do not name the chapters. You can do just as you think fit about fixing them up. If you are lazier than I am you very likely will say "Oh, let Metcalf do it!" Of course you will see I am entirely at your mercy.

                                    I shall be sending you today or sometime very shortly, most probably under separate cover, or possibly in this envelope, a batch of letters which I have received commending "Tarzan". You may have them for your own. Most of them are going to be published in the All-Story for December. There are some others which I shall very likely send you later. I am returning to you also those letters which you were kind enough to send me.

                                    I have been thinking over the necessity of a sequel to "Tarzan" and it certainly looks as though we ought to have one, don't you think so? Of course, as you say, sequels are never quite as good as the originals, but with such a howling mob demanding further adventures of your young hero, it looks to me as though it would be a very good move to bring him again to the notice of the great public.

                                    I have been wondering whether it would not be possible to have him, after receiving his conge from the girl, make a stagger at being highly civilized in some effete metropolis such as London, Paris or New York, where he very quickly finds the alleged diversions of civilization to be only as ashes in his mouth. Thereupon, he decides that the only thing he can do is to go back to the woods and again rule the apes. Naturally, with the amount of civilization which he has got hold of, he finds upon his return to the jungle that there is small satisfaction in being king over a few animals. For a while, of course, he tried to persuade himself into believing that he is happy once more. He very likely develops extreme cruelty and runs the gamut of doing all kinds of almost insane things with the various animals and also with the blacks.

                                    Then I was wondering whether it might not in some way be possible to introduce a young woman, whose childhood and youth had been spent exactly as had Tarzan's. She had been somehow marooned in the wilderness and, as Tarzan, had grow up to be a savage. I suppose you will have to re-introduce for some reason or other Clayton and his wife. I don't know exactly how.

                                     I don't offer this line of guff as anything more than a suggestion. It may be that you may find in it something which your superior ability might whip into shape. Think the matter over, anyway, and if you do not get any definite story in mind let me know and send me a simple scenario of  your idea.

                                    It is very funny about Mr. Brown. I really am not sure of his whereabouts, but he took your address with a great deal of care. However, he may not have liked the stories of yours which I showed him and possibly he thought he would not hurt your feelings by gratuitously looking you up and telling you he thought you were more of a success as a cheesemonger than as a story writer. We, however, know differently and have no doubts at all that the time will come when let alone naming race-horses "Tarzan", the word "Tarzan" will become a generic term for anything that is a huge success.

Yours very truly,
Thomas Newell Metcalf

M.H.
.
  

December 22, 1931
A Fan
Los Angeles, California

My dear (fan):

    I have to thank you for your letter of December 18th and for your interest in my stories.

    The correct pronunciations of the names listed in your letter are, as follows:

Again thanking you for your letter and with best wishes, I am

    Very sincerely yours,
Edgar Rice Burroughs (sig)

..
All-Story October 1912 - Tarzan of the Apes
All-Story October 1912 
Tarzan of the Apes 
complete in one issue
ERB C.H.A.S.ER. entry
Fred J. Arting McClurg: Tarzan of the Apes - title page silhouette
Dust Jacket for later hardcover edition
A. C. McClurg publisher
Fred J. Arting art based on title page silhouette
Read the eText

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN ERB and METCALF OF ALL-STORY
CONTENTS

Part I
August 24, 1911: Metcalf
August 26, 1911: ERB
August 28, 1911: Metcalf
September 28, 1911: ERB
October 6, 1911: Metcalf
November 4, 1911: Metcalf
Part II
November 6, 1911: ERB
November 20, 1911: Metcalf
June 26, 1912: Metcalf
June 28, 1912: ERB

 

Part III
September 20, 1912: ERB
October 2, 1912: ERB
October 9, 1912: ERB
Oct. 11, 1912: Metcalf
December 22, 1931: ERB
Part IV
October 15, 1912: ERB
December 5, 1912: ERB
December 10, 1912: Metcalf
December 12 1912: ERB

 

Part V
December 20, 1912: ERB
January 9, 1913: ERB
January 27, 1913: Metcalf
February 22  1913: ERB

 



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