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L. Sprague De Camp

Conan the Barbarian, the hero created by Robert E. Howard, has no equal in the realms of the Sword and Sorcery genre.  In the Fifties, L. Sprague de Camp edited Howard's stories for the Gnome Press editions of his Conan stories.  He also took existing Howard tales and converted them into Conan stories, finished unfinished manuscripts, and wrote some pastiches of his own.

Let me state my own biases before continuing.  I enjoy the pastiches de Camp wrote.  They weren't as good as Howard, and should not be published in the same volumes as Howard stories, but I liked them.  I even liked the posthumous "collaborations".  What I do not like is the "editing" de Camp did, which, to my mind, seemed more like butchering.

He didn't just edit Howard's Conan stories, he rewrote some stories to fit his conception of Conan's timeline.  Editing is fixing commas or maybe sentence structure, not changing the ending of a story.  A huge example of this can be found in The Black Stranger.  It didn't fit into the de Camp "timeline" for Conan's career, so de Camp rewrote it as "The Treasure of Tranicos," allowing  Conan to get saved by Aquilonian nobles so he can have a reason to go to Aquilonia and kill the king and take the crown.  De Camp further mauled the story by introducing Thoth-Amon into it for some reason. 

Editing is fine.  Completely rewriting a story is something else entirely.  Imagine if I sat down and rewrote portions of "Gone With The Wind" and published it as a posthumous "collaboration", and worked hard to make sure the original text was unavailable to casual readers.  Essentially, that is what de Camp did.

Again, I have no problems with the straight out pastiches.  Conan the Buccaneer may not be the greatest non-Howard Conan out there, but it was fun to read.  I enjoyed a lot of the Tor books (Robert Jordan, John Maddox Roberts, Steve Carpenter, et.al.), but I do have a problem with the rewrites.  De Camp worked hard to make sure that Howard's unedited Conan stories were unavailable to the general public.  I have a problem with that also.

Here is a sample of de Camp's rewriting.  From "The God in the Bowl", the second paragraph of the story, as written by REH in his final draft (taken from the original typescript):

"Arus stood in a vast corridor, lighted by huge candles in nitches along the walls. These walls were hung with black velvet tapestries, and between the tapestries hung shields and crossed weapons of fantastic make. Here and there too, stood figures of curious gods – images carved of stone or rare wood, or cast of bronze, iron or silver – dimly reflected in the gleaming black mahogany floor."

The same paragraph as re-written by de Camp (taken from the Lancer paperback):

"The watchman stood in a vast corridor lighted by huge candles set in niches along the walls. Between the niches, these walls were covered with black velvet wall-hangings, and between the hangings hung shields and crossed weapons of fantastic make. Here and there, too, stood figures of curious gods--images carved of stone or rare woods, or cast in bronze, iron, or silver--dimly mirrored in the gleaming black floor."

Was there a need for that kind of "editing"?

Care for another example?  From "The Frost Giant's Daughter" we have the following:

A small example of de Camp's unwarranted editing can be found by taking just one of the sentences from the unedited version and comparing it with the Lancer/Ace version of "The Frost Giant's Daughter":

Howard wrote, "Her maddening laughter floated back to him, and foam flew from the barbarian's lips."

De Camp re-wrote: "Foam flew from the barbarian's lips as her maddening laughter floated back to him."

What was the point of that change?

Four "Conan" stories, namely "The Blood-Stained God," "Hawks Over Shem," "The Road of the Eagles," and "The Flame Knife," are not even Howard Conan stories.  These are non-Conan stories that Howard wrote, and de Camp rewrote so that they would be Conan stories.  I have a problem with that too.  If there is a demand for more Conan stories, why not just write an honest-to-gosh pastiche?  These four stories have no place in Conan's career.

L. Sprague de Camp had no respect for Howard or his work.  He has said so.  He spent a lot of time and effort demeaning Howard to make his thefts and mangling of Howard's work of seemingly little import.  He was making a lot of money off of the Conan series, and the more he changed things in a story, the more money he got.  THAT is why he changed sentences around that didn't need it.  He opposed any and all efforts to publish non-de Camp edited Howard stories - because he got nothing if he didn't edit it.  And the more he edited, the more money he got.

I have heard the argument that Conan would not be a household word today if not for L. Sprague de Camp.  I just don't buy it.  Who knows?  Perhaps the Berkley Conan series would have taken off successfully.  It is just hard to say.  But right now, the most easily found Conan stories are the Lancer/Ace stories, and until someone decides to bring out the unedited Conan stories in a cheap format, people who do not know Conan will probably continue to get to know him via the L. Sprague de Camp edited versions.

Several companies are working toward bringing us unedited Conan stories (Millenium in the UK, and Wandering Star in the US), but they are expensive.  Donald Grant has published most of the Conan saga, but these have been found to have been edited as well, and are a bit expensive to boot.

If you are interested in more information on de Camp and Howard, The Barbarian Keep FAQ is a great resource to read.


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