The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
First edition cover
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| Author | Stephen King |
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| Cover artist | Michael Whelan |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Dark Tower |
| Genre | Fantasy, western |
| Publisher | Grant |
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Publication date
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June 10, 1982 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | |
| Followed by | The Drawing of the Three |
The Gunslinger is a novel by American author Stephen King and is the first volume in the Dark Tower series, of which King wrote in 1982 that he considers it his magnum opus. Initially a fix-up novel that strung together five short stories published between 1978 and 1981, it was first published in book form in 1982. King substantially revised the novel in 2003, which is the version in print today. The story centers upon Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, who has been chasing after his adversary, "the man in black", for many years. The novel follows Roland's trek through a vast desert and beyond in search of the man in black. Roland meets several people along his journey, including a boy named Jake Chambers who travels with him part of the way.
The novel was inspired by Robert Browning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" (1855), which King read as a sophomore at the University of Maine. King explains that he "played with the idea of trying a long romantic novel embodying the feel, if not the exact sense, of the Browning poem." King started writing this novel in 1970 on a ream of bright green paper that he found at the library.
The five stories that constitute the novel were originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction:
It took King twelve and a half years to finish the novel. The finished product was first published by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as a limited edition in 1982. The following year, as the Pet Sematary cover noted The Gunslinger among King's previous works, many fans called the offices of King, Grant, and Doubleday wanting more information on the already out of print book. This led to another run of ten thousand copies. In 1988, Plume released it in trade paperback form. Since then, the book has been re-issued in various formats and included in boxed sets with other volumes of the series.
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Wikipedia