The Dark Tower is a series of books inspired by Robert Browning’s poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”. Part fantasy, part western, part something entirely its own genre, it has become King’s most important work in many ways.

From 1978 and 1981, the installments that make up the first book where published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. They were collected into a book and published as “The Gunslinger” in 1982. The last book appeared on the shelves in 2004. But the story of this story spans even more years, since The Gunslinger was begun before even Carrie was published.