The Burroughs Cyclopædia: Characters, Places, Fauna, Flora, Technologies, Languages, Ideas and Terminologies Found in the Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs
By Clark A. Brady
McFarland & Co., Inc., 2005
Reviewed by William I. Lengeman III
(First published in Apex Digest)

The most interesting thing about The Burroughs Cyclopædia, at least to the casual Burroughs reader, is that there’s a need for such a thing at all. Over the years I’ve read a few Tarzan books and I was aware of Burroughs' Mars books, but I had no idea that he was so prolific.

Brady’s book, a paperback reissue of the 1996 library-bound edition, covers nearly ninety of Burroughs’ fictional works, most of them novels. Twenty-nine of these are Tarzan books. Among the other many works Burroughs turned out were westerns, historical fiction and “contemporary dramas.”

As Brady notes in the Preface, “the Burroughs universe is so complex as to demand a thorough reference to its countless otherworldly characters, places, terms and ideas.” The author has done an admirable job of creating just such a reference work.

The Cyclopædia defines terms that originated in the mind of Burroughs, as well as those that may not be familiar to modern-day readers. Brady also includes various foreign language terms and basically anything that he felt might be useful to Burroughs readers. The author admits that he “tried to err on the side of inclusiveness” and also notes, “If there was any doubt about an entry, it went in.”

And so there are entries for Dyak, “a member of the headhunting tribe of Borneo,” and Mu Tel, “the prince of Toonol on Barsoom,” mixed in with historical figures like Aimee Semple McPherson, Hirohito, Hitler and Stalin, whose listing melds fact with fiction, noting that “in 1929 he dispatched Leon Stabutch of the OGPU to kill Tarzan for his interference in Stalin-ordered subversive activities in Africa.”

It should come as no surprise that the entry for John Clayton Jr. – better known to Burroughs’ readers as Tarzan – is one of the most extensive. It weighs in at about six pages, with several more devoted to summarizing each Tarzan book. There is also an entry for Burroughs himself, who figures in several of his own tales, primarily in the role of narrator. Brady minces no words in the entry for Johnny Weismuller, dismissing him as a movie actor “who played Tarzan in numerous bad films.”

Also included are a chronology, story map and bibliography, along with a selection of words from thirteen languages used in Burroughs’ prose, among them Barsoomian, Apache and Ape.

It’s hard to imagine who the target demographic would be for a book like this. Casual Burroughs fans would likely find it to be overkill, while enthusiasts will presumably find most of it redundant. But it’s an impressive achievement nonetheless and a valuable addition to genre literature’s reference shelf.

Copyright 2007 – William I. Lengeman III