Edgar Rice Burroughs series order

A number of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ series intersect with one another, as well as with a few other books; so how do you know what order to read them in? Here’s a guide to the intersecting series, along with links to those books that are online (which is most of them, thanks to Australia’s more liberal copyright laws). Order between series doesn’t matter until you get to the crossover novels (the ones whose plots all connect in some way with Tarzan at the Earth’s Core); and after the crossover novels the series go their separate ways again:

Tarzan series (and related)	Mars series	Pellucidar series	Venus series
T1a. Tarzan of the Apes, chapters 1-11 T6. Jungle Tales of Tarzan T1b. Tarzan of the Apes, chapters 12-28 T2. The Return of Tarzan The Mad King, Part I (a.k.a. The Mad King of Lutha) The Eternal Lover (a.k.a. The Eternal Savage) The Mad King, Part II (a.k.a. Barney Custer of Beatrice) T3. The Beasts of Tarzan T4. The Son of Tarzan T5. Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar T7. Tarzan the Untamed T8. Tarzan the Terrible T9. Tarzan and the Golden Lion T10. Tarzan and the Ant-Men T11. Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle The Tarzan Twins Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-Bal-Ja, the Golden Lion T12. Tarzan and the Lost Empire	M1. A Princess of Mars M2. The Gods of Mars M3. Warlord of Mars M4. Thuvia, Maid of Mars M5. The Chessmen of Mars M6. The Master Mind of Mars	P1. At the Earth’s Core P2. Pellucidar

Tarzan/Mars/Pellucidar/Venus crossover novels

		P3. Tanar of Pellucidar [crossover #1]
	M7. A Fighting Man of Mars [crossover #2]
T13/P4. Tarzan at the Earth’s Core [crossover #3]		P4/T13. Tarzan at the Earth’s Core [crossover #3]
		P5. Back to the Stone Age [crossover #4]
			V1. Pirates of Venus [crossover #5]
Tarzan series (continued)	Mars series (and related – continued)	Pellucidar series (continued)	Venus series (continued)
T14. Tarzan the Invincible T15. Tarzan Triumphant T16. Tarzan and the City of Gold T17. Tarzan and the Lion-Man T18. Tarzan and the Leopard Men T19. Tarzan’s Quest T20. Tarzan the Magnificent T21. Tarzan and the Forbidden City T23. Tarzan and the Madman T24. Tarzan and the Castaways T22. Tarzan and the Foreign Legion [despite the numbering, this is the right order] T25. Tarzan: The Lost Adventure [fragment by ERB, completed by Joe Lansdale]	M8. Swords of Mars M9. Synthetic Men of Mars M10. Llana of Gathol M11a. John Carter and the Giant of Mars [by John Burroughs, ERB’s son; not canonical] M11b. Skeleton Men of Jupiter Beyond the Farthest Star Moon series (takes place in the future of the Mars series): L1. The Moon Maid L2. The Moon Men L3. The Red Hawk	P6. Land of Terror P7. Savage Pellucidar	V2. Lost on Venus V3. Carson of Venus V4. Escape on Venus V5. The Wizard of Venus

Burroughs also wrote three other series that don’t intersect (either with the series above or with one another), as well as many standalone novels. So here’s a quick guide to those:

Caspak series	Mucker/Bridge series	Shoz-dijiji series	Standalone books (no series)
C1. The Land That Time Forgot C2. The People That Time Forgot C3. Out of Time’s Abyss	MB1. The Mucker MB2. The Return of the Mucker MB3. The Oakdale Affair	S1. The War Chief S2. Apache Devil	The Bandit of Hell’s Bend Beware! The Cave Girl The Dancing Girl of the Leper King a.k.a. Land of Hidden Men a.k.a. Jungle Girl The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County The Efficiency Expert Forgotten Tales of Love and Murder The Girl from Farris’s The Girl from Hollywood I Am a Barbarian The Lad and the Lion The Lost Continent a.k.a. Beyond Thirty Marcia of the Doorstep The Man-Eater a.k.a. Ben, King of Beasts Minidoka: 937th Earl of One Mile Series M The Monster Men a.k.a. Number Thirteen a.k.a. A Man Without a Soul The Outlaw of Torn Pirate Blood The Resurrection of Jimber-Jaw The Rider You Lucky Girl!

Some readers think that the Caspak novels must be part of the Tarzan/Pellucidar universe because they feature dinosaurs surviving in the present day. Others think The Outlaw of Torn must be part of the Tarzan universe because there’s someone named Greystoke in it. These arguments seem less than decisive to me, especially the Greystoke one (it is a real name, after all; and at the time that ERB chose the name “Greystoke” for Tarzan, he may well have forgotten that he’d already used it for a minor character in Outlaw); but your haadage may vary.

On the other hand, some would regard Beyond the Farthest Star as a standalone novel, and perhaps they are right; but as the means of interplanetary travel is the same as in the Mars novels, and the means of interplanetary communication is almost the same as in the Venus novels, and as these are more distinctive features than merely having dinosaurs survive (which had already been done by Verne and Conan Doyle) or having the same name show up, I’m inclined to treat Beyond the Farthest Star as belonging to ERB’s Mars/Venus universe.

The sadly unfinished Skeleton Men of Jupiter and the non-ERB (and inaccurate, and dreadful) John Carter and the Giant of Mars are usually published together as John Carter of Mars (and attributed as a whole to ERB).

Despite having “Tarzan” in their titles and leading into the events of Tarzan and the Lost Empire, the two Tarzan Twins books (sometimes published together as Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins) are not traditionally considered part of the Tarzan sequence and so are left out of the standard numbering, probably because they were intended for a juvenile audience.

It’s not immediately obvious to a newcomer that The Mad King is related to the Tarzan sequence, but The Eternal Lover (likewise never included as a Tarzan book, despite filling in a crucial chapter in Tarzan’s biography) will make the connection clear.

It’s worth noting that once Tarzan gets back from the Earth’s core, his series starts to go downhill; ERB was clearly getting sick of writing about his most popular character, and inspiration was flagging.