Country United States Series Conan the Barbarian Originally published 1952 Preceded by The Bloody Crown of Conan Publisher Gnome Press | Language English Publication date 1952 Followed by King Conan | |
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Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Genres Fantasy, Short story, Sword and sorcery, Speculative fiction Similar Works by Robert E Howard, Conan Universe books, Sword and sorcery books | ||
The Sword of Conan is a collection of four fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, first published in hardcover by Gnome Press in 1952. The stories originally appeared in the 1930s in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. The collection never saw publication in paperback; instead, its component stories were split up and distributed among other "Conan" collections.
Contents:
Chronologically, the four short stories collected as The Sword of Conan are the third in Gnome's Conan series; the stories collected as King Conan follow.
Reception
Groff Conklin described the collection as "just another demijohn of corn ... full of blood, sex, sadism, violence ... all the garish trappings of escape into the Greater Past of the Natural Man". P. Schuyler Miller described the stories as "pure entertainment of the most outrageously blood-and-thunderish sort."