Tarzan of the Apes is Edgar Rice Burroughs' first novel in the series starring the man raised by apes. John Clayton is born in the coastal jungles of equatorial Africa to a marooned couple from England, John and Alice Clayton, the Lord and Lady of Greystoke. But after his parents die, the infant Clayton is adopted by she-ape Kala. Raised without awareness of his human heritage, he is named Tarzan, meaning "White Skin" in the language of the apes. Tarzan proved to be so popular that Burroughs continued to write his tales into the 1940s, clocking up two dozen sequels.