Who is the real-life Tarzan?
Tarzan is a famous character that was introduced by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912 in the pulp magazine The All-Story.
This is a story about a child who was stranded in the jungle and raised by apes. It was just later in his life when he had an encounter with humans. The character is known to be the king of the jungle who swings from vines and has a trademark call of the wild.
Eventually, he met abhorrent humans and his love interest, Jane. Then, he discovered his true identity that he was actually an English lord.
Burroughs was reluctant to reveal the inspiration behind his story. Pop-culture historian Scott Tracy Griffin, author of Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration and Tarzan on Film, based on the article in Reader’s Digest, shared that Burroughs said that his primary source was the tale of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome who were adopted by a she-wolf.
Rumors have been lingering for decades that Tarzan was based on what happened to a real-life person and possibly the speculations were fueled by Burroughs himself.
Griffin said, “In correspondence with professor Rudolph Altrocchi of the University of California at Berkeley, Burroughs cited a vague recollection of the story of a shipwrecked sailor adopted by apes but Altrocchi was unable to find such a source, as reported in his 1944 book, Sleuthing in the Stacks.”
He added that the first novel asserted that the story was perhaps true and that the names were just changed to hide the identity of the characters. Griffin pointed out that this was regarded as a literary device.
Who is the supposed real-life Tarzan? When you search this on Google, some articles would mention the name “William Mildin, the 14th Earl of Streatham.” It was said that family documents surfaced after Mildin’s son died in 1937 told a thrilling tale of shipwreck and adventure.
It was stated in the 1,500 handwritten pages of memoirs that the earl spent years in the wilds of Africa, like in the Tarzan story, after job on a boat went terribly wrong. Then, it was said that he took up with a group of apes after they provided him with food.
Despite the claims, there is no concrete proof that would state that Tarzan was a real person. This claim itself is a fiction.