After the spectacular success of the first Tarzan novel in 1914, Burroughs wrote and published steadily for the next thirty years. He could produce a novel a month, working five or six hours a day, dictating to a secretary.

He seldom revised his first draft, did not mind interruptions, and could work anywhere, even among his children. In view of his writing methods and the fact that he never actually went to Africa, the Tarzan novels are unavoidably full of gross improbabilities and striking inconsistencies, including talking apes, lost civilizations, and a race of men eighteen inches tall.

Farmer's most significant strategy in reworking Burroughs's fantastic material into a "true" biography was the use of a naive persona as his researcher/biographer/narrator. This narrator believes that Burroughs knowingly created inconsistencies and impossibilities because he was under the orders from "Lord Greystoke" (Tarzan) to conceal the true identify of...