These revised versions of the chronology guided the order in which the stories were arranged when they were compiled into book form in the early series published by Gnome Press (1950–1957), Lancer/Ace (1966–1977), and Bantam (1978–1982), and text from the chronology was used in these series to bridge gaps between the stories. Sprague de Camp to take into account additional Conan material, including previously unpublished stories by Howard and newly written stories by others. Over the years, Miller and Clark revised the chronology with L. Howard, who reviewed it in the draft and made a few corrections, stated it followed his vision of Conan's career "pretty closely." The version subsequently published in the Howard fanzine The Hyborian Age (1938) incorporated Howard's corrections. The essay A Probable Outline of Conan's Career (1936) was completed during Howard's lifetime by P. Fragments and synopses that were never completed are even more problematic and some contain what appear to be internal inconsistencies. While the earliest (Miller/Clark) timeline had at least partial endorsement from Howard, the addition of stories discovered and published after Howard's death in 1936 is more difficult to place.
But the middle part – the various tales of his being a pirate, brigand, and mercenary at various locations around the world – are more difficult to arrange in neat order. Ī number of factors have prevented the establishment of a consensus on the order of the Conan stories, most notably the fact that Howard himself apparently had little more than a general idea of the character's career path and intentionally wrote the stories out of chronological sequence.Ĭlearly, the stories where Conan is a thief are at the early part of his career and those of King Conan – in the later part. As Paolo Bertetti observes, the focus on the creation of a character chronology outside the work of the original author begins a "process that tends to transform the character into a social object of inter-individual construction and public debate, rendering it independent of texts in which it was born," and in the case of Conan, this has led to the exploitation of the character for commercial reasons and perhaps encouraged and justified the proliferation of pastiche stories and novels over the years.
Going beyond a simple fan activity, these efforts have had a significant impact on the development of the popular conception of the character of Conan as well as economic consequences on the Conan franchise. Howard and later writers, and attempted to organize them into a chronological timeline. From the 1930s onward a number of fans and scholars have analyzed the numerous Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. This article covers some of the major Conan chronologies that have been advanced over the years. Chronologies for the timeline in Conan stories
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