Howard crafted his tales for market requirements. His writing was his living, after all, and it may be that’s why his women often were little more than verbal eye candy. It helped his stories sell. He wrote what sold in the market, and the fact that these fine tales of a heroic female adventurer never saw print are testimony that the wider world, or at least the gatekeeping editors, were not yet ready for the more egalitarian tales Howard was perfectly capable of, and comfortable with, giving us.
TRAIL’S END
Many writers have left their readers wanting more before they rode into the sunset, frequently because they had a popular character or series that readers could not get enough of. One of many fascinating things about Robert E. Howard’s writing is that he managed to pull this trick not once, not twice, but for almost as many series and genres as he worked with. The craving for more Conan stories fired an entire industry of (mostly bad) pastiche based around the character, and now there is an entire role-playing game as well as an online multiverse so that others can walk into the mighty Cimmerian’s world and find their own adventures. But readers don’t just desire more tales of Conan – they want more Solomon Kane, more Kull, more Bran Mak Morn. And there are lesser known characters as well that we would gladly have glimpsed more of – El Borak, Turlogh, Dark Agnes – the list goes on, and if one reflects upon the length of that list and then upon both the relatively short time Howard was creating professional writing and the immense amount of prose he produced over those years, his accomplishment is all the more impressive. He gave us a great deal of fiction, and yet left us still hungry. He was only thirty when he died, a point I like to raise when critics speak to an immaturity they see in his themes or prose. Given that he was already
One of those things, I’m certain, would have been more quality historical stories. If his letters and accounts of conversations in the final months of his life are any judge, those historicals were likely to have been westerns, but Howard may have returned to other genres as well. Sadly, we can never know. We should take solace, though, in the excellence of the work Howard left us. It is my hope that this volume will help acquaint both Howard fans and curious newcomers with some of the finest work in his canon. It has been unfairly overshadowed by that featuring his more famous characters and perhaps at last will find the audience it has long deserved.
• Weinberg, Robert, “The Long Journey of the Morning Star,” in
NOTES ON THE ORIGINAL HOWARD TEXTS
The texts for this edition of
Deviations from the original sources are detailed in these textual notes. In the following notes, page, line, and word numbers are given as follows: 1.15.12, indicating page 1, fifteenth line, twelfth word. Story titles, chapter numbers and titles, breaks before after chapter headings, titles, and illustrations are not counted. The page/line/word number will be followed by the reading in the original source, or a statement indicating the type of change made. Punctuation changes may be indicated by giving the immediately preceding word followed by the original punctuation.
We have standardized chapter numbering and titling: Howard’s own practices varied, as did those of the publications in which these stories appeared. We have not noted those changes here.
French names in these stories have been given their correct forms (or as nearly correct as possible) by Patrice Louinet. Howard did not have even elementary French, and some of his names (for instance, “d’Valence”) are simply impossible. We have made a note of these changes at the beginning of the notes for the stories in which they occurred, but have not documented each occurrence throughout the story.
Throughout these stories, certain of Howard’s preferred spellings have been used even when editors of the magazines in which the stories appeared changed them. Hence we have used “scimitar” throughout, rather than “simitar,” “bazaar” rather than “bazar,” etc. Such changes are noted.
Please note that locations below refer to print ISBN 978-0-345-50546-0.
Text taken from Howard’s typescript, a copy of which was provided by Glenn Lord. 1.15.12: comma rather than period after “son”; 2.10.7: save that of; 2.12.7: no hyphen; 2.22.10: comma rather than period after “frankly”; 2.30.11: comma rather than period after “boldly”; 2.37.2: Do; 2.38.9: comma rather than period after “calmly”; 3.40.12: semicolon rather than comma after “began”; 4.9.5: “haste” not in original; 4.13.7: no hyphen; 4.16.3: comma rather than period after “threats”; 4.27.10: comma rather than period after “horseman”; 4.30.8: comma rather than period after “wanderer”; 5.2.6: conciousness; 5.4.1: no comma after “driftwood”; 5.7.11: comma rather than period after “kern”; 5.9.7: comma rather than period after “Dunlang”; 5.10.4: more weightier; 5.12.3: comma rather than period after “Conn”; 5.14.7: comma rather than period after “Dunlang”; 5.38.2: no comma after “Conn”; 5.38.3: unconciously; 6.1.13: comma rather than period after “angrily”; 6.13.7: comma rather than period after “Dunlang”; 6.21.9: comma rather than period after “his”; 6.25.6: statue; 6.31.10: period outside the quotation mark; 6.32.9: comma rather than period after “embrace”; 7.1.7: comma rather than period after “dully”; 7.6.3: “until” not in original; 7.11.11: comma rather than period after “sun”; 7.32.4: My; 7.36.1: comma rather than period after “passionately”; 7.39.6: comma rather than period after “Dunlang”; 8.1.10: comma rather than period after “answered”; 8.17.5: comma rather than period after “answered”; 8.18.12: comma rather than period after “gently”; 9.10.7: hyphen following colon; 9.17.9: statue; 10.8.5: Here; 10.14.3: comma rather than period after “said”; 10.16.6: comma rather than period after “stolidly”; 10.20.9: comma rather than period after “boldly”; 10.32.5: comma rather than period after “repeated”; 10.39.5: comma rather than period after “Conn”; 11.2.1: comma rather than period after “brusquely”; 11.5.3: comma rather than period after “grimly”; 11.8.8: comma rather than period after “Brian”; 11.13.5: It; 11.27.13: no comma after “priest”; 11.33.1: Your; 12.6.2: no hyphen; 12.31.11: comma rather than period after “moodily”; 13.3.8: comma rather than period after “sombrely”; 13.7.2: statue; 13.11.1: It; 13.17.14: comma rather than period after “grip”; 13.20.10: comma rather than period after “grasp”; 13.22.4: comma rather than period after “snarled”; 13.29.3: comma rather than period after “snarled”; 13.37.3: But; 14.2.3: dire; 14.3.6: comma rather than period after “her”; 14.5.6: comma rather than period after “bitterly”; 14.10.12: comma rather than period after “teeth”; 14.19.4: comma rather than period after “recoiling”; 14.27.11: comma rather than period after “girl”; 14.33.6: comma rather than period after “Eevin”; 15.5.11: comma rather than period after “disgust”; 15.10.11: no comma after “and”; 15.15: no section break; 15.20.8: comma rather than period after “provoked”; 15.29.2: comma rather than period after “wearily”; 16.13.11: comma rather than period after “tranquilly”; 16.22.12: no comma after “grinned”; 16.25.1: comma rather than period after “Dalcassian”; 17.16.7: comma after “Lennox”; 17.20.3: devision; 17.23.3: within in him; 17.25.8: devisions; 17.33.12: devisions; 18.8.14: comma rather than period after “call”; 18.18.12: comma rather than period after “Murrogh”; 18.41.5: no hyphen;
