NOTES ON THE CONAN TYPESCRIPTS AND THE CHRONOLOGY
By Patrice Louinet
LIST OF THE EXTANT CONAN TYPESCRIPTS(March 1932 - October 1933)
The final drafts of the stories published in Weird Tales were probably destroyed after the story was typeset, and thus are no longer extant.
Regarding the terminology used: a draft is “incomplete” when we are missing at least one page; it is “unfinished” when Howard didn’t finish the draft. Sometimes Howard would write a draft and rewrite only a portion of it; such drafts are subdivided with numerals (i.e., draft b2 recycles pages from draft b1). All drafts have been examined for the preparation of this volume.
We are particularly indebted to Glenn Lord for furnishing copies of the typescripts mentioned below, and to Glynn Crain and Robert Weinberg for copies of the typescripts sent to Robert H. Barlow.
Cimmeria
– The only surviving typescript of this 32 line poem was not prepared by Howard; it was obtained from Emil Petaja, to whom Howard had sent the poem, and is presumed to be Petaja’s transcription. A listing of Howard’s poems, made after his death by agent Otis Adelbert Kline, gives the poem’s length as 33 lines.
The Phoenix on the Sword
– draft a, incomplete (pp. 1-23 of 24)
– draft b1, 27 pp.
– draft b2, incomplete (pp. 7-13, 27, 28a, 28b of 28; pp. 1-6 re-used from b1; 14-26 re-used in version sent to Weird Tales; p. 28a discarded in favor of 28b)
– draft b3, pp. 1-4, 9-10 (rewriting of chapter 1 and end of chapter 2, per Farnsworth Wright’s request)
– draft b4 (final - Weird Tales - version) [lost]
The Frost-Giant’s Daughter
– draft a, 8 pp.
– draft b (final version), 9 pp. [later rewritten into non-Conan story The Frost-King’s Daughter ]
The God in the Bowl
– draft a, untitled, 16 pp.
– draft b, 22 pp. (numbered 1-6, 8-23 in error)
– draft c (final version), 22 pp. + additional p. 8 discarded and immediately rewritten
The Tower of the Elephant
– draft a, untitled, 22 pp.
– isolated p. 3 (probably discarded from final draft)
– draft b (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
The Scarlet Citadel
– synopsis, untitled, 1 p.
– draft a, untitled, diminishing to a synopsis, 19 pp.
– draft b, 39 pp. (numbered 1-8, 10-40 in error) [originally untitled; the title was added when Howard sent the typescript to Robert H. Barlow]
– notes for the aftermath of the battle of Shamu, 1 p.
– 4 pp. (numbered 32-35; probably discarded pp. from Weird Tales version)
– draft c (Weird Tales version) [lost]
– draft d (final version), 51 pp. [this typescript retyped from Weird Tales in mid-1933 (exists also as a carbon)]
Queen of the Black Coast
– draft a, untitled and unfinished, ending with partial synopsis, 17 pp.
– draft b1, untitled, 33 pp.
– draft b2, pp. 16-35 of 35, (re-uses pp. 1-15 from draft b1)
– draft c (final – Weird Tales – version) [This typescript is reportedly extant and now in private hands; perhaps sent to Robert H. Barlow in May/Jun 1934]
Black Colossus
– synopsis, untitled, 1 p.
– draft a, 51 pp. [originally untitled, the title was added when Howard sent the typescript to Robert H. Barlow]
– draft b, untitled, 48 pp.
– draft c, incomplete (pp. 7-8, 34-42, 44; p. 44 probably discarded from final version, other pages probably rejected by Farnsworth Wright and rewritten to reduce the length of the story)
– draft d (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
Iron Shadows in the Moon
– draft a, 38 pp. (numbered 1-37 plus unnumbered page to be inserted p. 9) [originally untitled; the title was added when Howard sent the typescript to Robert H. Barlow]
– draft b (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
Xuthal of the Dusk
– draft a, untitled, 39 pp.
– draft b (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
The Pool of the Black One
– draft a, untitled, 33 pp. (numbered 1-7, 9-34 in error)
– draft b (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
Rogues in the House
– draft (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
The Vale of Lost Women
– draft a, untitled, 17 pp.
– draft b (final version), 21 pp.
The Devil in Iron
– draft a, untitled, 37 pp.
– draft b (final – Weird Tales – version) [lost]
The Hyborian Age
– draft a, untitled, 2 pp.
– draft b, untitled, 7 pp.
– draft c, incomplete (pp. 2-12 of 12)
– draft d (final – Lany Corp – version) [lost]
OTHER
Two maps of the Hyborian world
Untitled document (Hyborian names), 1 p.
Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age, 1 p.
Untitled synopsis (“A squad of Zamorian soldiers...”), 1 p.
Untitled synopsis (“The setting: The city of Shumballa...”), 2 pp.
Untitled and unfinished draft (“The battlefield stretched silent...”), 3 pp.
Untitled and unfinished draft (“Amboola awakened slowly...”), 11 pp.
2. CHRONOLOGY OF THE STORIES
Few records of Howard’s submissions and sales survive, and the Conan stories are no exception. It follows that the exact writing chronology has to be deduced rather than reproduced.
One could expect the order of the stories as published in Weird Tales to help, but – aside from the fact that the Conan stories were not all accepted by the magazine – the results can be quite misleading. For instance: although The Hour of the Dragon was published in late 1935-early 1936, it is well documented that Howard had completed it in May 1934; while The Tower of the Elephant sold before The Scarlet Citadel, it was published after the latter. These examples are far from unique, as will be demonstrated shortly. References in Howard’s correspondence are fragmentary and sometimes vague, and Howard rarely mentioned unfinished or unsold tales to his correspondents.
Thus, the only way to establish the chronology is to rely on the study of the surviving drafts of the stories. Fortunately, the immense majority of these are now in Glenn Lord’s collection. Mr. Lord has graciously supplied us with this material. Additionally, copies of a few typescripts now in private hands were also generously supplied by their present owners.
Howard started writing professionally in 1921. As his typing and writing abilities improved, so too did the professionalism of his typescripts. For instance, up to mid-1932 Howard used capital letters to indicate text that should be rendered as italics, while from mid-1932 onward he would underline such text. A typescript with underlined words will thus have been written later than mid-1932. Another example: soon after Howard hired Otis Adelbert Kline as his agent in the spring of 1933, the Texan’s final drafts began at the middle of the first page, rather than the top. This was undoubtedly a stylistic request made by Kline; hence, Howard typescripts which begin in the middle of the first page were typed after the hiring of Kline in the spring of 1933.
A close study of the drafts yields far more detailed revelations. For example, it appears Howard only started introducing chapters in his stories in late 1928. From late 1928 until late 1932, he used the following format: “Chapter .1.” But in December 1932, Howard adopted a new presentation that dropped the word “chapter”; a chapter transition would thus be noted “.1.”. Still later, in March 1934, Howard changed to a “Chapter . 1 .” format.
Even more interesting discoveries are made by studying Howard’s numerous idiosyncrasies and spelling errors. By carefully noting when Howard started using a correct spelling rather than an incorrect one, one can establish the time frame in which a particular typescript was written. For instance, Howard always spelled “conscious” (and all its derived forms) as “concious” until March 1932. The first three drafts of The Phoenix on the Sword and the third of The Hyborian Age have the incorrect spelling, thus were composed before that date. Other examples abound: Howard spelled “horizon” as “horrizon” until early 1931, the verbs “envelop” and “develop” as “envelope” and “develope” until September 1932, and the word “divide” (formerly spelled “devide”) first appears in its correct form in a letter received July 13, 1932 by H.P. Lovecraft. Howard did not double the “n” in words ending in “-ness,” such as “barrenness,” “drunkenness,” or “suddenness,” until November 1932. This particular observation proved that Iron Shadows in the Moon was written before The Pool of the Black One.
There exist in fact about thirty such idiosyncrasies or errors. Once these were identified, there only remained the easy, if tedious and time-consuming, task of systematically checking for their respective appearances and disappearances. As stated before, the results are fragmentary, but between their fairly large number and the other clues described above, it becomes possible to establish the exact chronology of all the completed stories and to establish their writing dates within a two-month span at the maximum. The method also proved reliable enough to date the unfinished Conan tales, synopses and fragments. The following is an example of these combined techniques at work.
Queen of the Black Coast, published in Weird Tales in May 1934, was previously believed to have been composed during the second half of 1933. By applying the above methods to the surviving typescripts, a much different conclusion is reached. First, two names found in the drafts for this story suggest an earlier date: we find “Cush,” which Howard later spelled “Kush,” and “Nilus,” which was later changed to “Styx.” Second, the chapter-numbering pattern (e.g., “Chapter .1.”) reveals that this tale was composed before December 1932. Third, the fact that some words are underlined establishes that the story was written after The Scarlet Citadel (Spring 1932). Additionally, with four instances of an incorrectly spelled “-ness” word, it is clear that the story predates The Pool of the Black One (November 1932). Going still further, both the second and third drafts have the word “envelop” spelled incorrectly as “envelope”; Howard consistently spelled this word correctly beginning with a letter to H. P. Lovecraft in September 1932, so the drafts must have been written before that date. Finally, this tale has a correctly spelled “divide”: the first instance of this spelling in another Howard composition was in a July 13, 1932 letter (as noted above). Thus we conclude that all the drafts of Queen of the Black Coast were written between July 13 and September 1932, a full year earlier than previously thought.