Conan the Barbarian » (Special Value)

Robert E. Howard's (1906–1936) tales of heroic and supernatural fantasy won him a huge audience across the world and influenced a whole generation of writers, from Robert Jordan to Raymond E. Feist.

Conan the Barbarian is a name known throughout Cimmeria, Brythunia, Turan, and all the territories bordering the Vilayet Sea—as well as most countries more familiar to us in the real world.

For more than seventy-five years, the Cimmerian warrior’s adventures have thrilled readers of fantasy fiction, with movie and television audiences expanding his following. Role-playing games, video games, and computer games have all added to the legend of Conan, making him more famous in our world today than he ever was in his own realm during the Hyborian Age. This powerful collection of the original Conan epics, written by the character’s creator, Robert E. Howard, is prefaced by an essay called “The Hyborian Age,” which Howard wrote in 1932 to give his Conan stories a background that would set them in a historical context. The collection features the stories originally written by Howard to be published in the magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s, including the first published Conan story “The Phoenix on the Sword” and short stories such as “The Tower of the Elephant” as well as longer stories like “A Witch Shall Be Born.”

Although many have taken up the challenge to extend Conan’s adventures over the years, Howard was a master of his craft, lovingly creating a mythical world in which his original masterpieces reign supreme.