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The earliest works involving Star Wars chronologically are the Tales of the Jedi comics series, which is set millennia before the films are. The most recent is the New Jedi Order, which is set about twenty years after Return of the Jedi.
The Expanded Universe is actually older than the Star Wars movies themselves. It started in 1976 when the novelization of Star Wars hit book stands before the movie was released in theatres. The novelization was ghost written by Alan Dean Foster. Since Foster was writing the book before the final cuts had been made to it, there were several scenes that he wrote for the book that would not appear in the film thus expanding the Star Wars Universe.
The early years of the Expanded Universe where sporadic and unrefined because there was very little for the authors to go on. The first EU novel to not be an adaptation of the films was Splinter of the Minds Eye by Alan Dean Foster, drew inspiration largely from one of the original drafts of Star Wars. Many of the books and comics from the '80s made many analogies to our reality, and thus seem rather detached from the rest of the EU, despite the fact that they don't contradict any other sources. It wasn't until West End Games started publishing material for the Star Wars roleplaying game that the EU really began to be fleshed out.
The EU was by and large not very successful in its early years. Many readers were turned off by the lack of stories' connections to other stories. It wasn't until Timothy Zahn wrote Heir to the Empire in the early '90s that it really began to catch on. Heir to the Empire was the first book in Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy and it sparked a revolution in Star Wars literature. After Zahn followed numerous Star Wars novels, most being well received.
It was decided at one point that using the Empire as the villains over and over again was getting old. Hence a new threat, the Yuuzhan Vong, was introduced in the New Jedi Order. The prequels also brought a range of new possibilities. Since The Phantom Menace was set in a time of peace, it was hard to invent any kind of threat for the heroes to fight aganist. Thus most material that built on The Phantom Menace was either set before or during the film, rather than after. Attack of the Clones, on the other hand, introduced another fresh conflict -- one which fans had wanted to see for over twenty years. Aside from being explored in comics and novels, the Clone WarsThe Clone Wars ( 22 19 BBY) is a fictional conflict described in the Star Wars series and featured in the two latter episodes of the prequel trilogy, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith''. It was first mentioned in a brief conversation between Lu would be given their own cartoon series.