What do you think?
Rate this book
Conan the Barbarian: The Original Unabridged Adventures of the World's Greatest Fantasy Hero
Discover the epic deeds of Conan, the world’s most famous barbarian!
With this classic collection, fans of Conan the Barbarian can enjoy all the stories Robert E. Howard wrote for the magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s, as well as his hero’s later, longer adventures. The 17 works here include the first published Conan story “The Phoenix on the Sword,” “The Tower of the Elephant,” “A Witch Shall Be Born,” and the novel The Hour of the Dragon . Howard was a master of his craft, lovingly creating a mythical world in which his original masterpieces reign supreme.
With this classic collection, fans of Conan the Barbarian can enjoy all the stories Robert E. Howard wrote for the magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s, as well as his hero’s later, longer adventures. The 17 works here include the first published Conan story “The Phoenix on the Sword,” “The Tower of the Elephant,” “A Witch Shall Be Born,” and the novel The Hour of the Dragon . Howard was a master of his craft, lovingly creating a mythical world in which his original masterpieces reign supreme.
512 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2019
2 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
About the author
Robert E. Howard
2,983 books2,649 followersRobert Ervin Howard was an American pulp writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, boxing, western, and detective fiction. Howard wrote "over three-hundred stories and seven-hundred poems of raw power and unbridled emotion" and is especially noted for his memorable depictions of "a sombre universe of swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror."
He is well known for having created—in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales—the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can only be compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.
—Wikipedia
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
He is well known for having created—in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales—the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can only be compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.
—Wikipedia
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 4, 2022
These were good, solid adventure stories. The book itself is pretty good-sized, but it's actually several shorter works, none of which even reaches 100 pages in length. So it's easy to chunk up into pieces for easy reading.
The cover of the book says it includes "the original unabridged adventures of the world's greatest fantasy hero," and apparently it includes pretty much the entire collection of Conan stories between the time that Robert E. Howard started writing them in 1932 until his suicide in 1936. (The back cover blurb makes mention of a short story called "The Tower of the Elephant," but that title doesn't appear in the table of contents, nor did I run across such a story in my reading of the book.) I will admit that I only skimmed "The Hyborian Age," the history of Conan's world that Howard wrote when it became obvious that the character was going to be around for a bit. Despite that, I noted a lot of place-names and other terms that were similar to real places, as well as the use of "kshatriya" as a title, which can't be a coincidence (kshatriya is the second-highest caste in traditional Indian society, just beneath the brahmins). A student of world history would probably be able to see far more connections that I did.
Warning for modern audiences, though... this collection was written in a different time, for a niche audience. The men tend to be manly men, the women are more often than not helpless and reliant upon a man for protection, good people are noble and bold, and bad people are either openly evil, or quietly treacherous. There are some racial and gender stereotypes that don't age particularly well, but I for one was able to get past them easily by remembering that these attitudes are nearly a century old, and LOTS of things have changed since then.
I will admit that as genre writing, sometimes the adjectives get a little repetitive. In fact, one of the world's most popular authors (I won't mention his name, but his initials are SK) derides the Conan stories for their frequent mention of "iron thews" and the like, but another author of the past that SK favors talks PLENTY about horrors that are so awful they can't be put into words... and then he uses plenty of words to explain how these images can't be verbalized. I like Lovecraft, too, by the way, but it just drives home to me that we should be able to like who we like without worrying too much about what others' opinions are, iron thews and indescribable horrors aside.
While he may not be universally popular, Howard's most memorable character has stayed in the public consciousness for 90 years now, in movies, comics, other stories, etc. There must be SOMETHING of the barbarian Conan, a wanderer from the land of Cimmeria, that really speaks to a lot of people.
The cover of the book says it includes "the original unabridged adventures of the world's greatest fantasy hero," and apparently it includes pretty much the entire collection of Conan stories between the time that Robert E. Howard started writing them in 1932 until his suicide in 1936. (The back cover blurb makes mention of a short story called "The Tower of the Elephant," but that title doesn't appear in the table of contents, nor did I run across such a story in my reading of the book.) I will admit that I only skimmed "The Hyborian Age," the history of Conan's world that Howard wrote when it became obvious that the character was going to be around for a bit. Despite that, I noted a lot of place-names and other terms that were similar to real places, as well as the use of "kshatriya" as a title, which can't be a coincidence (kshatriya is the second-highest caste in traditional Indian society, just beneath the brahmins). A student of world history would probably be able to see far more connections that I did.
Warning for modern audiences, though... this collection was written in a different time, for a niche audience. The men tend to be manly men, the women are more often than not helpless and reliant upon a man for protection, good people are noble and bold, and bad people are either openly evil, or quietly treacherous. There are some racial and gender stereotypes that don't age particularly well, but I for one was able to get past them easily by remembering that these attitudes are nearly a century old, and LOTS of things have changed since then.
I will admit that as genre writing, sometimes the adjectives get a little repetitive. In fact, one of the world's most popular authors (I won't mention his name, but his initials are SK) derides the Conan stories for their frequent mention of "iron thews" and the like, but another author of the past that SK favors talks PLENTY about horrors that are so awful they can't be put into words... and then he uses plenty of words to explain how these images can't be verbalized. I like Lovecraft, too, by the way, but it just drives home to me that we should be able to like who we like without worrying too much about what others' opinions are, iron thews and indescribable horrors aside.
While he may not be universally popular, Howard's most memorable character has stayed in the public consciousness for 90 years now, in movies, comics, other stories, etc. There must be SOMETHING of the barbarian Conan, a wanderer from the land of Cimmeria, that really speaks to a lot of people.
January 26, 2023
Solid adventure stories (with a few things that are definitely "products of their time"). The selling point of this collection is the inclusion of a kind of partial "world history" that the author worked off of when writing for this series/character.
October 15, 2023
I loved the Conan stories as a kid so I decided to read them again. However, I now know bad writing when I read it and I struggled to get thru a lot of it because of the poor writing. Howard is still a fun read though I enjoyed the stories.
December 18, 2022
Interesting. Very much a product of its time but fascinating to see such an early Influential piece of fantasy and recognize it’s Impact on modern fantasy.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews