Contains non-Howard material – edited by L. Sprague de Camp

Conan the Adventurer is a 1966 collection of four fantasy short stories by American writers Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard’s sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. The book has been reprinted a number of times by various publishers and has also been translated into German, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Dutch. It was later gathered together with Conan the Wanderer and Conan the Buccaneer into the omnibus collection The Conan Chronicles 2 (1990).

Drums of Tombalku was finished by de Camp.

Contents

• 6 •  A Map of the World of Conan in the Hyborian Age • (1966) • interior artwork by John D. Clark, Ph.D. and L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard and David A. Kyle and P. Schuyler Miller [as by John D. Clark and L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard and David Kyle and P. Schuyler Miller]
• 9 • Introduction (Conan the Adventurer) • (1966) • essay by L. Sprague de Camp
• 11 • The People of the Black Circle • [Conan] • (1934) • novella by Robert E. Howard
• 89 • The Slithering Shadow • [Conan] • (1933) • novelette by Robert E. Howard
• 122 • Drums of Tombalku • [Conan] • (1966) • novelette by L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard
• 165 • The Pool of the Black One • [Conan] • (1933) • novelette by Robert E. Howard

Plot summary

In these stories from Conan’s early thirties, the Cimmerian starts as a leader of an Afghuli tribe in Vendhya, journeys into the Black Kingdoms south of Stygia, and ends up as a Zingaran buccaneer.

Chronologically, the four short stories collected as Conan the Adventurer fall between Conan the Wanderer and Conan the Buccaneer.

Notes

First published in Great Britain by Sphere Books Ltd 1973
Reprinted 1975, 1976 (three times), 1980, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985

Se complete Sphere publishing story.