Queen of the Black Coast

Introduction

“Queen of the Black Coast” is one of the original short stories about Conan the Cimmerian. First published in Weird Tales magazine in May 1934. Conan becomes a notorious pirate and plunders the coastal villages of Kush alongside Bêlit, a head-strong femme fatale.

Due to its epic scope and atypical romance, the story is considered an undisputed classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his most famous tales.

Howard earned $115 for the sale of this story to Weird Tales and it is now in the public domain. There was also a partial early draft where the Queen is named Tameris, not Bêlit.

From the letters:

In a letter (#262) to Clark Ashton Smith, ca. October 1933 the story is mentioned:

Thanks very much for the kind things you said about my recent yarns. Wright has three more Conan yarns yet unpublished: “Iron Shadows in the Moon”, “The Queen of the Black Coast”, and “Rogues in the House” which I hope you’ll like. I’m at present working on another which I haven’t yet titled.

Lovecraft also commented on the story and in an answering letter (#284) Howard writes:

Thanks very much for the kind things you said about my recent yarns. Wright has three more Conan yarns yet unpublished: “Iron Shadows in the Moon”, “The Queen of the Black Coast”, and “Rogues in the House” which I hope you’ll like. I’m at present working on another which I haven’t yet titled.

Robert H. Barlow also like the story as we learn in a letter (#290) from Howard written on June 1, 1934:

Thank you very much for your kind comments concerning “Queen of the Black Coast”, and I am sorry about your eyes. I strained mine at a comparatively early age, and have been forced to wear glasses while reading or working for a number of years now.

Howard thanks HPL again in a letter (#294) circa June 1934:

Glad you’re finding your stay in Florida so enjoyable. Glad you liked “Queen of the Black Coast”. The fans seem to have liked the verse headings of the chapters. Thanks for the kind things you said about the Kull stories, but I doubt if I’ll ever be able to write another. The three stories I wrote about that character seemed almost to write themselves, without any planning on my part; there was no conscious effort on my part to work them up. They simply grew up, unsummoned, full grown in my mind and flowed out on paper from my fingertips. To sit down and consciously try to write another story on that order would be to produce something the artificiality of which would be apparent.

Published in:

The L. Sprague de Camp edited version of this story appears in the following places: