1894 October The Return Of Tarzan

Date:  September 24, 1894, through October 24, 1894
Event:  For a month Tarzan becomes a regular visitor of Countess Olga de Coude.
Source:  "For a month Tarzan was a regular and very welcome devotee at the shrine of the beautiful Countess de Coude." ERB-The Return Of Tarzan. Here Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author, tells us again that the jungle lord is twenty-two years old. "Twenty is shy in exchanging confidences with forty. Tarzan was but two years her senior." ERB-The Return Of Tarzan.

J. Allen St. John

Date:  October 25, 1894     
Event:  Nikolas Rokoff sets Tarzan and Countess Olga de Coude up and Count Raoul de Coude catches them together.
Source:  "For days they watched the papers as well as the movements of De Coude and Tarzan." ERB-The Return Of Tarzan.
Chat:  During this event, Tarzan says a most interesting thing. "Until I was fifteen I had never seen a human being." ERB-The Return Of Tarzan. This is very contradictory to what Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author, told is in chapter nine of Tarzan Of The Apes. "Thus, at eighteen, we find him, and English lordling, who could speak no English, and yet who could read and write his native language. Never had he seen a human being other than himself, for the little area traversed by his tribe was watered by no greater river to bring down the savage natives of the interior." ERB-Tarzan Of The Apes.
     After many unbiased attempts, and combinations, at forming a chronology based on Tarzan being fifteen when he sees his first man; I must stick with him being eighteen as told in Tarzan Of The Apes.  My most successful attempt left two unexplainable time gaps.
     Edgar Rice Burroughs again lets us know Tarzan has been out of Africa for two years.  "Two years is too short a time in which to attempt to work the change in an individual that it has taken countless ages to accomplish in the white race." ERB-The Return Of Tarzan.

J. Allen St. John

Date: the morning of October 26, 1894     
Event:  Tarzan told Lieutenant Paul d'Arnot about the Count Raoul de Coude incident.
Source:  "Tarzan did not disturb him, but the following morning he narrated the happenings of the previous evening, omitting not a single detail." ERB-The Return Of Tarzan.

Neal Adams

About The Author

James Michael Moody is a lifelong fan and collector of Edger Rice Burroughs. Moody has contributed over two hundred articles to various ERB-related fanzines, over a span of forty-five years. He also manages an unauthorized Tarzan blog titled, Greystoke Chronologist: James Michael Moody. There the researcher chronologies the Tarzan books starting in May 1872 (known as the pushback theory).instead of the more excepted date May 1888.

James Michael Moody is also the author of the action-packed Sci-Fi fantasy adventure Unium series. Pioneers On Unium, published December 31, 2019, and Exiled On Unium, published August 25, 2022. Swordsman On Unium is going through the publishing process.