The original novels and short stories to feature the character of Zorro, a mask and cape-clad vigilante bandit who fights injustice in Spanish California.
The sleepy pueblo of Reina de Los Angeles could be Paradise. The weather is sunny, the señoritas are pretty, the caballeros are handsome, and the land is rich with promise. But alas! The new governor is a tyrant who oppresses the natives, overtaxes the peasants, and seeks to rob the proud, upstart hidalgos of their lands and wealth to give to himself and his cronies. He has the army firmly under his control, and has placed corrupt officers to enforce his will upon the people.
But there is one man who the governor cannot stop, one man who rises up to fight for justice, who inspires the people to resist and take control of their own destinies. That man is Señor Zorro, The Fox, whose cunning is legend, whose swordsmanship is unsurpassed, whose black-clad, masked form slips in and out of the night like a ghost. You may know him by the ragged letter "Z" he carves into the cheeks or clothes of wicked men who have lost duels to him, and leaves at the scene of his adventures. He discomforts the powerful and corrupt, and helps the poor and oppressed. Truly, this Zorro is a hero!
But who is this mysterious Zorro behind his mask? Well, it is certain that it cannot be Don Diego (de la) Vega, even though Don Diego is certainly the right age and of good family. For Don Diego is a useless fop who reads poetry, disdains violence and any form of sweat-inducing activity, and sniffs a perfumed handkerchief when in the presence of his lessers. No, it cannot be he.
Or can it?
Basically, think The Scarlet Pimpernel if moved to California, and following in the footsteps of Robin Hood as opposed to rescuing aristocrats from the guillotine. Or, alternatively, Batman (hell, it's become canon that the Wayne family were leaving a movie theatre after watching The Mark Of Zorro note on the fateful night that Thomas and Martha were murdered).
The Zorro literature canon was originated by Johnston McCulley with the novellanote The Curse of Capistrano, initially serialized in All-Story Weekly Magazine in 1919. The Swashbuckling story was complete in itself, without much room for sequels. Douglas Fairbanks Senior read the novella, loved it, and convinced his studio to buy the rights so he could star in a movie adaptation, The Mark of Zorro (1920). It was a huge success, inspiring McCulley to write a sequel, The Further Adventures of Zorro, and a total of 62 Zorro stories altogether (six short novels and 56 shorter stories, or five serial stories and 57 standalone stories), ending with The Mask of Zorro, printed posthumously in 1959. Zorro has now become a Public Domain Character and retroactively identified as a Proto-Superhero, as his story contains many of what would later be considered genre hallmarks like a Secret Identity.
A more recent literary portrayal was written by Isabel Allende in 2005, with a significant amount of Continuity Nod to previous works.
For adaptations and derivative works, see this page.
List of stories in publication order (longer novels in italics):
- The Curse of Capistrano
— first serialized in five parts, August 9, 1919 – September 6, 1919; published in book form in 1919, reissued as The Mark of Zorro in 1924 - The Further Adventures of Zorro — serialized in six parts, May 6, 1922 – June 10, 1922; published in book form as The Sword of Zorro in 1928
- Zorro Rides Again — serialized in four parts, October 3, 1931 – October 24, 1931
- "Zorro Saves A Friend" — November 12, 1932
- "Zorro Hunts A Jackal" — April 22, 1933 (aka "Zorro Hunts by Night")
- "Zorro Deals With Treason" — August 18, 1934
- "Mysterious Don Miguel" — serialized in two parts, September 21, 1935 – September 28, 1935
- The Sign of Zorro — serialized in five parts, January 25, 1941 – February 22, 1941
- "Zorro Draws a Blade" — July 1944
- "Zorro Upsets a Plot" — September 1944
- "Zorro Strikes Again" — November 1944
- "Zorro Saves a Herd" — January 1945
- "Zorro Runs the Gauntlet" — March 1945
- "Zorro Fights a Duel" — May 1945
- "Zorro Opens a Cage" — July 1945
- "Zorro Prevents a War" — September 1945
- "Zorro Fights a Friend" — October 1945
- "Zorro's Hour of Peril" — November 1945
- "Zorro Lays a Ghost" — December 1945
- "Zorro Frees Some Slaves" — January 1946
- "Zorro's Double Danger" — February 1946
- "Zorro's Masquerade" — March 1946
- "Zorro Stops a Panic" — April 1946
- "Zorro's Twin Perils" — May 1946
- "Zorro Plucks a Pigeon" — June 1946
- "Zorro Rides at Dawn" — July 1946
- "Zorro Takes the Bait" — August 1946
- "Zorro Raids a Caravan" — October 1946
- "Zorro's Moment of Fear" — January 1947
- "Zorro Saves His Honor" — February 1947
- "Zorro and the Pirate" — March 1947
- "Zorro Beats the Drum" — April 1947
- "Zorro's Strange Duel" — May 1947
- A Task for Zorro — June 1947
- "Zorro's Masked Menace" —July 1947
- "Zorro Aids an Invalid" — August 1947
- "Zorro Saves an American" — September 1947
- "Zorro Meets a Rogue" — October 1947
- "Zorro Races with Death" — November 1947
- "Zorro Fights for Peace" — December 1947
- "Zorro Serenades a Siren" — February 1948
- "Zorro Meets a Wizard" — March 1948
- "Zorro Fights with Fire" — April 1948
- "Gold for a Tyrant" — May 1948
- "The Hide Hunter" — July 1948
- "Zorro Shears Some Wolves" — September 1948
- "The Face Behind the Mask" — November 1948
- "Zorro Starts the New Year" — January 1948
- "Hangnoose Reward" — March 1949
- "Zorro's Hostile Friends" — May 1949
- "Zorro's Hot Tortillas" — July 1949
- "An Ambush for Zorro" — September 1949
- "Zorro Gives Evidence" — November 1949
- "Rancho Marauders" — January 1950
- "Zorro's Stolen Steed" — March 1950
- "Zorro Curbs a Riot" — September 1950
- "The Three Stage Peons" — November 1950
- "Zorro Nabs a Cutthroat" — January 1951
- "Zorro Gathers Taxes" — March 1951
- Zorro's Fight for Life — July 1951
- "Zorro Rides the Trail!" — May 1954
- "The Mask of Zorro" — April 1959; posthumously published
All the stories were first published in pulp magazines and only later in book form. Most of the stories were not even republished in book form for decades after their initial publication. From 2016 to 2017, the whole run was finally reprinted in one go as the Zorro: The Complete Pulp Adventures book series. An earlier attempt, Zorro: The Masters Edition (the page image) ran from 2000 to 2002 but fizzled out for some reason.
Tropes specific to the original stories:
- Canon Discontinuity: At the end of The Curse of Capistrano, the main villain is dead, and Zorro publicly unmasked, revealing his identity to everyone. By the third book, neither of those events had ever happened.
- Continuity Snarl: The local garrison's Sergeant is usually named Gonzales, but sometimes he's Garcia, which predates the 1950s TV series using that name.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In contrast to the Zorro of Pop-Cultural Osmosis.
- The Curse of Capistrano has Zorro wear a full-face mask, a sombrero, and a poncho under his cloak. It's not an all-black or mostly black costume since his cloak is purple and only his mask is clearly said to be black. He uses a pistol as well as a sword, and tends to pull it out first but mainly to keep opponents at bay as he limits his sword fights to one foe at a time, and while he whips out a whip it's implied to be not a regular part of his kit but to pay back a whipping in kind. Then while later stories have him switch to the all-black suit and carry a whip, he never stops packing a pistol.
- Also it's ambiguous what kind of sword Zorro uses. Don Diego wears a rapier, but an ornate one as part of his foppish twit act (so Zorro would presumably use a different one), and Zorro's and everyone else's are not specified further beyond "swords" and "blades" so they could be military-issue sabers or something else. The second novel The Further Adventures of Zorro further distinguished swords and rapiers, with the local garrison's soldiers said to use sabers.
- Diego's surname is "Vega" instead of "De la Vega" even in later stories. It seems it was the 1950s TV series that made this change, which stuck for later media. Before that, adaptations only used "Vega" as well.
- Impoverished Patrician: The Pulido family was once wealthy and influential, but have lost much of this financial and social clout because of Don Carlos Pulido's opposition to the current governor.
- Good Shepherd: Felipe, a Franciscan friar, is an ally to Zorro, a friend to the natives, and welcoming to those in need.
- Have a Gay Old Time: In at least one of the short stories. In "Zorro's Strange Duel", an abusive ranch owner releases "an ejaculation of surprise" when Zorro shows up to stop a flogging.
- Loves My Alter Ego: In The Curse of Capistrano, Lolita Pulido cares not for the affections of Don Diego and Captain Ramon...but she is very into the strong and mysterious wanted criminal Zorro, while being unaware that Zorro is Diego.
- Market-Based Title: The Curse of Capistrano was later retitled The Mark of Zorro after its movie adaptation when compiled and published in book form.
- Ret-Canon: Later stories, which began to be written after the first Zorro movie was a hit, use his more familiar look from the movies. The second novel unlike the first didn't describe what Zorro was wearing beyond that it was his old costume, allowing for this retcon to happen.
- Downplayed however. The later stories say his costume is all black akin to the movies and unlike the original, but don't go in much detail what it looks like, so one is free to imagine the classic costume. But as late as the late 1940s, the magazine illustrations still had Zorro's mask cover his whole face.
- Retcon: Besides the above changes, in later stories Bernardo is said to be only a mute rather than a deaf-mute person, predating the 1950s Disney TV series (where he pretends to be deaf, to spy for Zorro all the better).
- Secret-Keeper: By the later stories, it's explicitly said that only three men besides Zorro himself know his secret identity - Diego's father Don Alejandro, Fray Felipe, and Diego's servant Bernardo.
- Serial Novel: Out of the over 60 original Zorro stories, four out of the five multi-part ones are this, the odd one out being considered a short story. Two other novels and the rest of the short stories were published in one piece.
- A Taste of the Lash:
- In The Curse of Capistrano Fray Felipe is publicly whipped on trumped-up charges because the authorities (correctly) believe him to be an ally of the masked highwayman Zorro. When Don Diego is unable to stop this, he goes as Zorro to whip the people involved.
- In later stories Zorro regularly carries a whip as in other media. He often uses it to flog in turn those mistreat the natives and peon workers by flogging them. At least once, as in "Zorro's Strange Duel", this results in a whip duel between Zorro and such a taskmaster. Zorro also claims his whip is for foes that are beneath notice of his sword.
- Title Drop: In the first novel, Zorro is called the "Curse of Capistrano" because one of the areas he's known to strike within California is San Juan Capistrano, though the bulk of the setting is in Los Angeles.
- Unexplained Recovery: Captain Ramon, the antagonist of the first Zorro novel, is killed in a sword fight with Zorro at that novel's climax. When Johnston McCulley wrote the sequel, Ramon is inexplicably alive and well again.
- Upper-Class Twit: Most people that know Don Diego think he's just a weak, ineffectual rich guy. Little do they know he's also the masked vigilante, Zorro!
- Zorro Mark: Zorro is said to cut a z-shape mark onto his victims with his sword.
