Publishing history of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories

Following Howard's death, the copyright of his Conan stories passed through several hands. Eventually, under the guidance of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, the stories were expurgated, revised, and (in some cases) completely rewritten. For more than fifty years, Howard's original Conan stories remained out of print. In the 1980s and 1990s, the copyright holders took Howard's stories out of print entirely, while continuing to sell pastiche works by other authors.

The character of Conan has proven durably popular, resulting in pastiche Conan stories being assembled by later writers such as Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, Karl Edward Wagner, John Maddox Roberts, Andrew J. Offutt, J. Ramsey Campbell, Poul Anderson, Richard A. Lupoff, Björn Nyberg, Robert Jordan, Steve Perry, Leonard Carpenter and John C. Hocking. Some of these pastiches have finished incomplete Conan manuscripts by Howard (listed above). Others were created by rewriting Howard stories which originally featured entirely different characters from entirely different milieus. Most, however, are completely original works. In total, more than fifty pastiche novels and dozens of short stories featuring the Conan character have been written by authors other than Howard.

Since 2000 both Gollancz and Wandering Star have produced collections of all of Howard's stories in a "pure" form.