The Mad King

A young american is mistaken for a mad king and the adventure begins! A story of action and intrigue and a noble hero!

"I have passed through a series of rather remarkable adventures since I came to Lutha," said Barney apparently quite irrelevantly, after the two had remained silent for a moment. "Shortly after my car fell upon you I was mistaken for the fugitive King Leopold by the young lady whose horse fell into the ravine with my car. She is a most loyal supporter of the king, being none other than the Princess Emma von der Tann. From her I learned to espouse the cause of Leopold." ~~~ Edgar Rice Burroughs created one of the most iconic figures in American pop culture, Tarzan of the Apes, and it is impossible to overstate his influence on entire genres of popular literature in the decades after his enormously winning pulp novels stormed the public's imagination. The Mad King, first published in book form in 1926 and difficult to find in print, is the rollicking yarn of American Barney Custer, who is mistaken for a deranged sovereign in the faraway land of Lutha. Perhaps Burroughs's most outrageously grandiloquent work, this tale of daring swordfights, damsels in distress, and diabolical villains is a favorite among true Burroughs devotees. American novelist EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS (1875-1950) wrote dozens of adventure, crime, and science-fiction novels that are still beloved today, including Tarzan of the Apes (1912), At the Earth's Core (1914), A Princess of Mars (1917), and Pirates of Venus (1934). He is reputed to have been reading a comic book when he died.

Short excerpt: For ten years no man of them had set eyes upon the face of the boy-king who had been hastened to the grim castle of Blentz upon the death of the old king his father.

Set in the fictional European kingdom of Lutha, the protagonist is a young American named Barney Custer, of Beatrice, Nebraska, who is the son of an American farmer and a runaway Luthan princess, Victoria Rubinroth. Unaware of his royal blood, much less that he is a dead ringer for his relative Leopold, the current king of Lutha, Barney visits Lutha on the eve of the First World War to see for himself his mother's native land. As he arrives in Lutha, King Leopold has just escaped from his ten years' imprisonment at the hands of his scheming uncle, Prince Peter of Blentz. Much to his own and everyone else's confusion, Barney is naturally mistaken for the king, leading to numerous complications...

Year of the Mad King: The Lear Diaries, is Antony Sher's account of researching, rehearsing and performing one of Shakespeare's greatest roles: King Lear. His honest, illuminating and witty commentary provides an intimate, first-hand look at the development of his Lear and the production as a whole. Also included are a selection of his paintings and sketches, many reproduced in full color.

For this balanced and sympathetic biography, the author was given the complete freedom of the secret Archives of the Royal House of Wittelsbach.