Brian Leno let me know that a copy of The Dark Barbarian from 1984 is up on ABEbooks for $200. General price range on copies lately seems to hover around $50ish, but this one has added attractions.

It comes from the Library of Scott Connors, and I have written about Scott’s library before.

Inscribed to Scott personally by me, as editor, and also by Donald Sidney-Fryer and Dennis Rickard as contributors. And we all knew Scott well, a pal for many years.

The seller renders this transcription of my holograph:

Inscribed on the title page by Herron; “For Scott Connors, Who, as a youth contributed and essay to an earlier assembly of what would become; The Dark Barbarian, Don Herron.”

Can’t the guy read my handwriting?

Check his sales image above. No way would I write “and essay” instead of “an essay.” And that is a colon, not a semi-colon. Plus, check out all the exclamation points.

But it reminds me of something otherwise long since submerged from the surface of the old brainpan: that Scott — as a very, very young Young Scott — was in the running for an initial lineup of essays on Robert E. Howard. Pretty sure it was his piece from Nyctalops, about Bran Mak Morn or something.

Also in that lineup I had my “Conan vs. Conantics,” but I realized those contents just weren’t good enough to do what I wanted to do.

So I worked on it and produced the critical landmark The Dark Barbarian.

By the time I got around to editing The Barbaric Triumph twenty years later, Scott was seasoned enough to be one of my first choices to contribute. Although I did have to beat him with a stick to get out of him what I knew he should be able to do. (And his essay “Twilight of the Gods: Howard and the Volkstumbewegung” is what I knew he could do — excellent, flat-out excellent.)

All the contents of both critical collections, and more, available in The Dark Barbarian That Towers Over All.