For some of us old timers, it’s hard to believe that it has been almost 50 years since the “Burroughs Boom” of the ’60s. In 1962 both Don Wollheim at ACE Books, and Jack Biblo & Jack Tannen’s Canaveral Books began reprinting ERB titles that they believed to be in public domain. For the first time in their lives young Baby Boomers were able to readily find Burroughs’ Mars, Pellucidar and Venus tales, along with a few of the non-series titles, on the news stand and new bookstores rather than in antiquarian bookshops and the musty basements and attics of their grandparents.
In November, 1963, after a year of reprints, Canaveral began to publish true first editions of stories that had either only been available in magazine form or had been found in the archives at Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. after Ed had died. Their premier hardback first edition was the complete set of chapters that made up the final novel of ERB’s inner world, Savage Pellucidar. The first three parts had appeared in 1942 in Amazing Stories, but the last was not published until 1963. This hardback edition was the first time all four parts of the novel were printed together.
Through some mixup at Ziff-Davis, or in Ray Palmer’s office, the painting by J. Allen St, John intended to illustrate the third part, “Tiger Girl,” in Amazing Stories of April, 1942, was used as a cover on the March, 1942 issue of the sister magazine Fantastic Adventures, which contained another Burroughs tale, “War on Venus.” Thus the artwork publication preceded the story.
When Canaveral published the hardback edition they illustrated it with all the line drawings that St. John had done for the magazine publications but missed the chance to reunite the misplaced cover artwork with the final novel. This lapse was pointed out in Caz Cazedessus’ fanzine ERB-dom #14 (October, 1965) and he printed a recreation (artist uncredited) of the St. John cover, in black and white, with title lettering based on that used on the ERB, Inc. edition of Back to the Stone Age, to be used as an alternate dust jacket. Finally published in color on the back of ERB-dom #26 (June 1969) with art by G. M. Farley and a change to the author name lettering, that mockup was designed as a partial wraparound to be inserted in front of the Canaveral dj. The spine included the “doodad” symbol that was used on all the ERB, Inc. editions.
In 1999 while at the Burroughs Bibliophiles “Dum-Dum” in Tarzana, California, showing my first dust jacket replicas, I was asked by Pete Ogden, editor and publisher of the fanzine ERBANIA, to create a new alternate jacket from a fresh scan of the Fantastic Adventures cover. As a new element, I was also to use the front flap blurb text that Ed himself had written and which had been found in his papers after his death. I decided not to use the Burroughs’ symbol on the spine because I felt that it was really intended for those editions published by Burroughs himself. I did, however use a St. John illustration from the magazine publication to match the ERB, Inc. layouts. I reset all the type in the original fonts used by Canaveral and replicated the rest of the layout exactly. The only change I made was to do a colorized version of the photo of ERB on the back cover. The Savage Pellucidar alternate is really the most complete and accurate dust jacket for the book.
After I’d finished it, I took a copy to Danton Burroughs at ERB, Inc. to get his permission to sell it. He was very excited about it and noted with satisfaction that I had included the proper copyright notice for the blurb text. Later I sent a copy to Dick Lupoff who had been the editor at Canaveral in the 60s. He too was pleased and told me, “I wish we’d been able to turn out a jacket like this back in Canaveral Press days.”
Biblo and Tannen didn’t have the resources to publish their books with full color dust jackets. They were excited about their venture and they did the best they could with what they had. We still have to thank them for bringing greater attention to the art of Roy Krenkel and Frank Frazetta and for making these first editions finally available to Burroughs fans everywhere.