History

Publication history

After working for many years on the Nickelodeon show Are You Afraid of the Dark?, DJ MacHale decided to try writing a book series. Working with the same publisher behind Dark's spin-off book series, Simon and Schuster, DJ published the first book in the Pendragon series, The Merchant of Death, in 2002. The series grew in popularity over the years, eventually becoming a New York Times bestseller. The series spent 76 weeks total on the New York Times' children's series bestsellers list.

At the peak of the series' popularity, around 2008, DJ's website had a lot of fun stuff for fans of the series to look at, including forums. Read more about that website here!

The Pendragon audiobooks were published from 2005 to 2009 by Brilliance Audio, read by William Dufris. The audiobooks are one of my favorite parts of Pendragon! I probably wouldn't love Pendragon like i do if i hadn't listened to them. Thank you William Dufris for your fantastic performances <3

The graphic novel adaptation of The Merchant of Death was published on May 20th, 2008, illustrated by Carla Speed McNeil.

In 2010, all ten books were published again with new covers. In addition to the multiple English versions, the series has been translated and published in 14 other languages (that i know of!). I love collecting and cataloging the different versions of Pendragon covers! If you're interested, check out my cover gallery!

After the final Pendragon book was published in 2009, DJ moved on to writing the Morpheus Road trilogy. MR is a fun series, with some interesting connections to Pendragon. to Pendragon fans looking for something new, I always recommend DJ's other books, especially Morpheus Road!

Fandom history

The Pendragon fandom, though relatively small, has created many interesting things since the first book was published. if you want to know more, check out this page, or see Pendragon on Fanlore!