Violet Books

John King was the pseudonym of Ernest L. McKeag who published other lost race & juvenile adventures under his own name. Shuna & the Lost Tribe (Stoke-on-Trent: Harborough, 1951) was the sequel to Shuna, White Queen of the Jungle (1950). Inspired by Burrough's Jungle Girl, Haggard's She & the then-popular comic strip Sheena of the Jungle, Shuna adventured in South America. This volume begins as a fairly typical tale of an Inca city hidden in the Matto Grasso, but then unexpectedly a large chunk of the jungle is snatched away by a passing planetoid.

An elephant is shown chasing our boy heros through a never-before-explored jungle on the dustwrapper of James Foster's Forest of Mystery (Akron, Ohio: Saalfield, 1935). This young-adult jungle thriller has a marginal lost race & fantasy content, with intimations of unseen aboriginal giants, as well as odd flora & fauna including a white pygmy elephant.

In Eleanor Tompkins' Kofi & the Golden Trinkents (Ln: Pickering & Inglis, 1954), an old map drawn by an ancestor of the protagonist sets off a treasure hunt in North Africa. As the dustwrapper says, "Life in that country is vivividly portrayed as the native scenes rise before us & the old slave castles appear on the scene." Tompkins wrote this not just as a boys' adventure, but as "an exciting story for any boy or girl."

P. T. Barnum's Dick Broadhead: A Tale of Perilous Adventure (New York: Dillingham, 1888) is shown here in pictorial cloth. A tale of fantastic adventure in the wilds of Africa, the episodes include an extended journey into caverns & voyage upon an underground river, wherein is discovered an idol of an Egyptian-like vanished race. The book's woodcut engravings are also quite stunning.

Victor George Charles Norwood's Jacare the Untamed series was in overt imitation of Tarzan. The Caves of Death (London, 1951) was issued as "A Scion Jungle Novel" in this exciting large format pictorial paperback. The hero discovers a subterranean Lost World & the episode illustrated pits Jacare against a fierce pterodactyl. It was number 2 in the series that began that year with The Untamed.

Victor Norwood's The Temple of the Dead (London: Scion, 1951) is #3 in the Jacare the Untamed series, issued as an oversized paperback. The series was one of many that all-but-plagiarized Edgar Rice Burroughs. Each book had a colorful cover illustration of the Tarzan-clone hero in action, as with this portrait of Jacare in a one-against-all sequence atop the doomful temple.

Victor Norwood's The Skull of Kanaima (London: Scion, 1951) was first issued in this oversized paperback with thrilling pictorial. It is #4 in the Jacare the Untamed series, & depicts Jacare in a lion-battle akin to similar battles fought by Samson, King David & Tarzan. I am beholden to William Matthews, Bookseller for permission to use the Jacare illustrations for books from Bill's catalog.

Victor Norwood's The Island of Creepling Death (London: Scion, 1952) is shown here in its thrilling pictorial wrapper, issued as an oversized paperback. It is #5 in the Jacare the Untamed series which the Burroughs estate no doubt wished didn't exist, so close is Jacare to Tarzan. Here Jacare is shown in a scene closely identified with Johnny Weismiller's crocodile-wrestling Tarzan scenes, as well as with Roy Rockwood's Bomba the Jungle Boy series.

Marco Garron was a pseudonym, tentatively identified as D. A. Griffiths. His entry into the Imitation Tarzan fold renamed the familiar Burroughs character Azan, which in the sound-alike department went considerably closer to the original than did Victor Norwood's Jacare. The first of these adventures was Azan the Ape Man: The Missing Safari (London: Curtis Warren, 1950). The oversized paperback's pictorial wrapper shows Azan confronting a fiercely fanged ape so traditional to jungle fiction from Haggard to Burroughs to Robert E. Howard.

Marco Garron's Azan the Ape Man: The Lost City (London: Curtis Warren, 1950) cribs plot & character from Edgar Rice Burroughs for this second episode of Azan's career, to the everlasting annoyance of the Burroughs estate. The oversized paperback's pictorial wrapper for this Lost Race adventure was designed to titilate its teenage readers.

Azan the Ape Man: White Fangs by Marco Garron (London: Curtis Warren, 1951) was, like the rest in the series, issued in large pictorial wraps. This time Azan is shown doing battle with a big green constrictor the markings for which match no known species, but closest to a Green Tree Boa that doesn't get so big as this one. This was the fourth Azan adventure. After six were published, the Burroughs estate successfully acquired an injunction against any more of them being published.

Marco Garron's Azan the Ape Man: Tribal War (London: Curtis Warren, 1951) was the fifth in the six-book cycle of paperback originals, if imitating Tarzan can be called "original." As with the Norwood Tarzan imitations, I am beholden to William Matthews for permission to show you these bindings for books from his for-sale stock. You can e-mail Bookbill if you need to know what he may have in this vicinity just now.