Tarzan of the Apes (Edited Classic)

Without his animal strength and human intelligence, Tarzan of the Apes would many times have been a dead man. Orphaned in infancy, Tarzan is adopted by a female ape who has just lost her own baby. Against all odds, he survives and learns the ways of the great apes. But Tarzan is different from the apes, and he knows this more with each passing day. Then he comes face-to-face with a beautiful woman named Jane, and, more than ever, he wonders just who the real Tarzan is.

Townsend Library classics have been edited to make them more accessible to today’s readers. But the books have not been “abridged” in the sense of shortening them by sacrificing story development, character richness, and the author’s voice. In our experience, abridged books result from a simplistic removal of large chunks of material or a formulaic “translation” that robs a book of its distinctive flavor. By contrast, as we produce a Townsend Library title, we seek to edit the material carefully and respectfully in order to preserve the qualities that have made the book a classic.

TL editors approach every book entirely on its own merits, guided constantly by these questions:

• “What will get in the way of a reader’s enjoyment of this wonderful story?”

• “How can the story be made more readable while preserving the integrity of the original book?”