Conan Chronologies

This article covers some of the major Conan chronologies that have been advanced over the years. From the 1930s onward a number of fans and scholars have attempted to create a chronological timeline into which the numerous Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. Howard and later writers could be placed.

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. As Paolo Bertetti observes, the focus on the creation of a character chronology outside of 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.

A number of factors have prevented the establishment of a consensus on 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. Clearly, the stories where Conan is a thief are at the early part of his career and those of King Conan - at the later part. But the middle part - the various tales of his being a pirate, land-robber and mercenary at various locations around the world - are more difficult to arrange in a neat order. 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 are more difficult to place. Fragments and synopses that were never completed are even more problematic and some contain what appear to be internal inconsistencies.

The essay A Probable Outline of Conan's Career (1936) was completed during Howard's lifetime by P. Schuyler Miller and John D. Clark. Howard, who reviewed it in 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 chronology was revised over the years by Miller, Clark and L. Sprague de Camp to take into account additional Conan material, including previously unpublished stories by Howard and newly written stories by others. 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.

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