A list of prose works by Robert E. Howard.The works are sorted by genre, by series and then alphabetically. They parted after a drive and would not see each other again for over a year. [81] Howard initially deferred to Lovecraft but gradually asserted his own views, even coming to deride Lovecraft's opinions. [169] Howard himself was a natural storyteller and later a professional storyteller. [115] This was followed by another experimental Conan story, "The Black Stranger", with a similar setting. Robert E. Howard (22 January 1906 – 11 June 1936) was an American writer of fantasy and historical adventure pulp stories, published primarily in Weird Tales magazine in the 1930s. His letters to Lovecraft also contain information about the history and geography he encountered on his journeys. In January 1934 the publisher rejected the collection but suggested a novel instead. [132][133], Through much of the next two years they dated on and off, spending much time discussing writing, philosophy, history, religion, reincarnation and much else. Explore books by Robert E. Howard with our selection at Waterstones.com. —Robert E. Howard in a letter to Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright, Summer 1931. 17 (1952). Weird Tales became a bimonthly publication and pulps such as Fight Stories, Action Stories and Strange Tales all folded. [154][159], Howard had feminist views, despite his era and location, which he espoused in both personal and professional life. It was long on posthumous armchair psychoanalysis and short on some other things. Howard's most famous character, Conan the Barbarian, has a pop-culture imprint that has been compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond. The last of the initial trio was "The God in the Bowl", which went through three drafts and has a slower pace than most Conan stories. The central plot remains that of a barbarian having become king of a civilized country and a conspiracy to assassinate him. Later, in 1935, Howard claimed in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith that Conan "simply grew up in my mind a few years ago when I was stopping in a little border town on the lower Rio Grande." After that year, he had absorbed the parts of it that worked best for him and made them his own. Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. [41], Howard spent his late teens working odd jobs around Cross Plains, all of which he hated. Lord began as a fan of Howard and had re-discovered many unpublished pieces that would otherwise have been lost, printing them in books such as Always Comes Evening (1957) and his own magazine The Howard Collector (1961–1973). [45], Weird Tales paid on publication, meaning that Howard had no money of his own at this time. [13][42] In the week of Thanksgiving that year, and after years of rejection slips and near acceptances, he finally sold a short caveman tale titled "Spear and Fang", which netted him the sum of $16 and introduced him to the readers of a struggling pulp called Weird Tales. Maintained a friendly correspondence with. Both this revision and the next Conan story, "The Tower of the Elephant", sold with no problems. [168] Howard's parents were both natural storytellers of different kinds and he grew up in early twentieth century Texas, an environment in which the telling of tall tales was a standard form of entertainment. This attitude is summed up in his famous line from "Beyond the Black River": "Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. The words sounded familiar to her, but it was only in early June 1936 that she found the source in Macbeth:[143]. His articles, essays, and introductions about Robert E. Howard and his works have appeared in publications for the Robert E. Howard Foundation, Dark Horse Comics, Boom! He would also employ some racial stereotypes, possibly for the sake of simplification. On the morning of June 11, 1936, Howard asked one of his mother's nurses, a Mrs. Green, if she would ever regain consciousness. His face was boyish, not yet having squared off into angles; his blue eyes slightly prominent, had a wide-openness which did not suggest anything of the man's keen wit and agile fancy. In 1966, de Camp made a deal with Lancer Books to republish the Conan series, which led to the "First Howard Boom" of the 1970s; their popularity was enhanced by the cover artwork of Frank Frazetta on most of the volumes. [87][89][90], Howard had originally used the name "Conan" for a Gael reaver in a past-life-themed story he completed in October 1931, which was published in the magazine Strange Tales in June 1932. Howard followed up this tale with the now-classic revenge nightmare "Worms of the Earth" and several other tales, creating horrific adventures tinged with a Cthulhu-esque gloss and notable for their use of metaphor and symbolism. In "Wings in the Night", for instance, Howard writes that: The ancient empires fall, the dark-skinned peoples fade and even the demons of antiquity gasp their last, but over all stands the Aryan barbarian, white-skinned, cold-eyed, dominant, the supreme fighting man of the earth. [65] In July of the same year, Argosy finally published one of Howard's stories, "Crowd-Horror", which was also a boxing story. ", I hated school as I hate the memory of school. [172] Howard was also a practitioner and fan of boxing, as well as an avid weightlifter. The two most important of these, Tevis Clyde Smith and Truett Vinson, shared his Bohemian and literary outlook on life, and together they wrote amateur papers and magazines, exchanged long letters filled with poetry and existential thoughts on life and philosophy, and encouraged each other's writing endeavors. In his best work, Howard's writing seems so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks. The Conan stories were increasingly edited by de Camp and the series was extended by pastiches until they replaced the original stories. [76][77] By virtue of this, Howard quickly became a member of the "Lovecraft Circle", a group of writers and friends all linked via the immense correspondence of H.P. Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. - IMDb Mini Biography By: [50] Nevertheless, as a result of this apprenticeship, his stories increasingly took on the aura of "prose-poems" filled with hypnotic, dreamy imagery and a power lacking in most other pulp efforts of the time. [129][130] The relationship between the couple was irrevocably scarred, but they continued visiting with each other as friends until May 1936, when Price left Cross Plains for Louisiana State University to get a graduate degree. Robert E. Howard was born on January 22 (or possibly January 24), 1906, in the “fading little ex-cowtown” of Peaster, Texas, in Parker County, just west of Fort Worth. However, he was not what she expected. Sprague de Camp, Conan of the Isles, "Introduction", 1968, Criticism of Robert E. Howard and his work often turns towards biographical details and "backhanded compliment[s]. [79][80], The correspondence between Howard and Lovecraft contained a lengthy discussion on a frequent element in Howard's fiction, barbarism versus civilization. Like any mention whatsoever of Howard’s classic yarn, … After Howard bought a car in 1932, he and his friends took regular excursions across Texas and nearby states. [146][147], In June 1936, as Hester Howard slipped into her final coma, her son maintained a death vigil with his father and friends of the family, getting little sleep, drinking huge amounts of coffee, and growing more despondent. Multiple audio dramas have been adapted, from professional audio books and plays to LibriVox recordings of works in the public domain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. When she closed the agency in 1965, a new agent was required. However, he removed an entire subplot concerning a couple's romance and created a new one with a supernatural element; the story was re-titled "The Phoenix on the Sword", an element from this new subplot. In Fredericksburg, while overlooking sullen hills through a misty rain, he conceived of the fantasy land of Cimmeria, a bitter hard northern region home to fearsome barbarians. The story was briefly held as part of the company's assets before being returned to Howard. It is all just pulp—although, perhaps, a somewhat superior grade of pulp than the average. "[93], By March, Howard had recycled an unpublished Kull story called "By This Axe I Rule!" Howard countered by listing many historic abuses of the citizenry by so-called 'civilized' leaders. [94][95][96], With these three completed he created an essay called "The Hyborian Age" in order to flesh out his setting in more detail. [158] Significant works in terms of Howard's views on race are "Black Canaan" and "The Last White Man", which depict white protagonists at war with black barbarity. "[191] Howard scholar Rob Roehm considers the use of the phrase "can't ever be taught" to be a variation on the recurrent theme of Howard's lack of skill or training. Thousands of people arrived in the town looking for oil wealth. Howard held that civilization was inherently corrupt and fragile. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre. He quit his stenographer's job to work at Robertson's Drug Store, where he rose to become head soda jerk on $80 per week. This one is a murder mystery filled with corrupt officials and serves as Conan's introduction into civilization, while showing that he is a more decent person than the civilized characters. Howard and Smith drove to the Price farm and Smith introduced his friends to each other. [155] He was also of the belief that, no matter who won the subsequent conflicts, it would only ever be a temporary victory. [107] However, this was followed with the beginning of the latter group of Conan stories which "carry the most intellectual punch," starting with "The People of the Black Circle". [181][182], Howard first bought a pulp magazine, a copy of Adventure, when he was fifteen. [137], By 1936, almost all of Howard's fiction writing was being devoted to westerns. The first boom ended in the mid-1980s. The Baums eventually sold their rights to the Swedish (now US) company Paradox Entertainment. A bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of boxing and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding, eventually taking up amateur boxing. Civilization is unnatural. [138][139][140][141], In hindsight, there were hints about Howard's plans. 1929 was the year Howard broke out into other pulp markets, rather than just Weird Tales. After a drive through town they arranged their first date. [184] Much of 1931 was spent by Howard attempting to mimic Lovecraft's style. For his part, Lovecraft began to include Howardian action sequences in his own work, for example in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". [40] On his return to his home town, he engaged in a self-created regimen of exercise, including cutting down oak trees and chopping them into firewood every day, lifting weights, punching a bag and springing exercises; eventually building himself from a skinny teenager into a more muscled, burly form. During the four years of the magazine's existence, he crafted some of his very best tales, gloomy vignettes of war and rapine in the Middle and Far East during the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, tales that rival even his best Conan stories for their historical sweep and splendor. Lovecraft was a friend and admirer of his. [nb 8], Howard was given the affectionate nickname "Two-Gun Bob" by virtue of his long explications to Lovecraft about the history of his beloved Southwest, and during the ensuing years he contributed several notable elements to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos of horror stories (beginning with "The Black Stone", his Mythos stories also included "The Cairn on the Headland", "The Children of the Night" and "The Fire of Asshurbanipal"). Soon the pair were actively fighting. Kull of Atlantis or Kull the Conqueror is a fictional character created by writer Robert E. Howard.The character was more introspective than Howard's subsequent creation, Conan the Barbarian, whose first appearance was in a re-write of a rejected Kull story. [112], Howard may have begun losing interest in Conan in late 1934, with a growing desire to write westerns. Howard's first published novel, A Gent from Bear Creek, was printed in Britain one year after his death. Robert E Howard is a fascinating, almost Hemingway-like writer, from the days "when men were men", when racks were stuffed with dozens of "Pulp" titles (so called because they use cheap "pulp" paper, however, it became a literary genre all by itself, a subcategory of mysteries, Science fiction and of course- fantasy). It wasn't the work I minded; I had no trouble learning the tripe they dished out in the way of lessons - except arithmetic, and I might have learned that if I'd gone to the trouble of studying it. His mother had been ill with tuberculosis her entire life, and upon learning she had entered a coma from which she was not expected to wake, he walked out to his car and shot himself in the head. [127], In the spring of 1936, Howard sold a series of "spicy" stories to Spicy-Adventure Stories. The story was, however, rejected by Weird Tales, which was rare for later Conan stories. Isaac Howard replied that he would go wherever his son went, thinking he meant to leave Cross Plains. In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith in October 1933, he wrote that its sequel "The Garden of Fear" was "dealing with one of my various conceptions of the Hyborian and post-Hyborian world. [10][18] From the age of nine he began writing stories, mostly tales of historical fiction centering on Vikings, Arabs, battles, and bloodshed. Howard submitted a batch of his best available stories, including "The Tower of the Elephant" and "The Scarlet Citadel", on June 15. This is a interview I shot with Norris Chambers, the last person living, as far as I know, who knew Robert E. Howard. Howard grew to despise the oil industry along with everyone and everything associated with it. Both considered marriage but never at the same time. Even during his life, others in Cross Plains thought of him as crazy or odd. [19][20][43] However, Howard's first real success was the Sailor Steve Costigan series of humorous boxing stories, beginning with "The Pit of the Serpent" published in the July 1929 issue of the pulp magazine Fight Stories. The 1920s version was a treasure-hunting adventurer but the 1930s version, first seen in "The Daughter of Erlik Khan" in the December 1934 issue of Top-Notch, was a grim gun-fighter keeping the peace after having gone native in Afghanistan. [179], —Robert E. Howard, letter to Tevis Clyde Smith, circa February 20, 1928[180], The oil boom in Texas was "one of the most powerful influences on [Howard's] life and art", albeit one that he hated. The author therefore stopped writing weird fiction and turned his attentions to this steadily growing passion. His first cover story was for "Wolfshead", a werewolf story published when he was only twenty. All fled--all done, so lift me on the pyre; The feast is over, and the lamps expire. Howard was born and raised in Texas. His Conan stories began featuring western elements, most notably in "Beyond the Black River", "The Black Stranger", and the unfinished "Wolves Beyond the Border". His love of poetry came from being read to by his mother at a young age. Supplement 1, pp. Ah to be alive in those days! He also corresponded with other "Weird Tale" writers such as Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, and E. Hoffmann Price. These stories sold easily and they include the first and second Conan stories to feature on the cover of Weird Tales, "Black Colossus" and "Xuthal of the Dusk". [108] This was followed by another abortive attempt at a novel, this time a Conan novel which later became Drums of Tombalku. As before, the boom led to new comic books, films and computer games. [121][125][126], Conan remained the only character that Howard ever spoke of with his friends in Texas and the only one in whom they seemed interested. [118][120] More successfully, in late 1933 Howard took a character conceived in his youth, El Borak, and began using him in mature, professional tales of World War I-era Middle Eastern adventure that landed in Top Notch, Complete Stories, and Thrilling Adventures. [73], When Farnsworth Wright started a new pulp in 1930 called Oriental Stories, Howard was overjoyed—here was a venue where he could run riot through favorite themes of history and battle and exotic mysticism. [nb 6][nb 7][57][58] Featuring Kull, a barbarian precursor to later Howard heroes such as Conan, the tale hit Weird Tales in August 1929 and received fanfare from readers. Yet his other work was either unremarkable or just abysmal. Kevin Lane , author of the highly recommended Glammenport , explains why Howard's Conan books are a must read for any fan of sword & sorcery novels. ", In the foreword to "Two-Gun Bob", a collection of essays on the subject of Howard, fellow fantasy fiction writer, Michael Moorcock, wrote: "The ability to paint a complex scene with a few expert brushstrokes remains Howard's greatest talent, and such talent can't, of course, ever be taught. [91], Going back home he developed the idea, fleshing out a new invented world—his Hyborian Age—and populating it with all manner of countries, peoples, monsters, and magic. The success of Conan the Conqueror led to a series of Conan books from publisher Gnome Press, the later editor of which was L. Sprague de Camp. [122][123], In the years since Conan had been created, Howard found himself increasingly fascinated with the history and lore of Texas and the American Southwest. [106], In late 1933 Howard returned to Conan, starting again slightly awkwardly with "The Devil in Iron". Howard's critical reputation suffered at first but over the decades works of Howard scholarship have been published. The fellow who is afraid of being rousted by those young punks who hang around his bus stop can go home at night and imagine himself wielding a sword, his potbelly miraculously gone, his slack muscles magically transmuted into those "iron thews" which have been sung and storied in the pulps for the last fifty years. Howard saw market after market falter and vanish. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded warmly to Howard, and soon the two Weird Tales veterans were engaged in a vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. Sword and sorcery novels and stories are tales of power for the powerless. Following Robert E. Howard's death, the courts granted his estate to his father, who continued to work with Howard's literary agent Otis Adelbert Kline. However, all but two were rejected, convincing Howard not to continue the series. [71][72], Howard's "Celtic phase" began in 1930, during which he became fascinated by Celtic themes and his own Irish ancestry. Mr. Howard's heroes project the immature fantasy of a split mind and logically pave the way to schizophrenia.[189]. In 1920, on February 17, the Vestal Well within the limits of Cross Plains struck oil and Cross Plains became an oil boomtown. He rewrote it again in August and submitted it to Weird Tales in September. Written as tall tales in the vein of Texas "Tall Lying" stories, the story first appeared in the March–April 1934 issue of Action Stories and was so successful that other magazines asked Howard for similar characters. Howard, however, was too preoccupied with the state of his mother's health to give her the attention she wanted. While at college, Howard wrote for their newspaper, The Yellow Jacket. Many of his works are set in the period of decay or among the ruins the dead civilization leaves behind. He had worked exclusively on the novel for two months, writing approximately 5,000 words per day, seven days a week. [92] Another potential inspiration is G. K. Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse and Chesterton's concept that "it is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment. Some of the pulp fiction of the short-lived Texan Robert E. Howard are straightforward Westerns or historical romance; his contribution to the history of fantasy was to realize that setting his stories of ruthless hard men in Atlantis or a mythical age shortly after its fall enabled him to write without the trammels of historical accuracy. Howard remains a highly read author, with his best works still reprinted, and is one of the best-selling fantasy writers of all time. Biography in: "American National Biography". Born in Peaster, Texas, he was raised in Cross Plains. Born in Peaster, Texas, he was raised in Cross Plains. Cross Plains' population quickly grew from 1,500 to 10,000, it suffered overcrowding, the traffic ruined its unpaved roads and vice crime exploded but it also used its new wealth on civic improvements, including a new school, an ice manufacturing plant, and new hotels. Robert E. Howard’s career comprised much more than the characters for which he’s best remembered. "[194], Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi wrote, in his biography H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, that "The bulk of Howard's fiction is subliterary hackwork that does not even begin to approach genuine literature" and "The simple fact is, however, that his views are not of any great substance or profundity and that Howard's style is crude, slip-shod, and unwieldy. [197] (Adjusted for inflation, this amount would be equivalent to between $14,740 and $23,952.). Although the character swears by the god "Crom", that is his only link to the more famous successor character. [117], The character of Conan had a wide and enduring influence among other Weird Tales writers, including C. L. Moore and Fritz Leiber, and over the ensuing decades the genre of sword and sorcery grew up around Howard's masterwork, with dozens of practitioners evoking Howard's creation to one degree or another. [4][6][7], During Howard's youth his parents' relationship began to break down. He is best known as the creator of both Conan the Barbarian and the sword & sorcery sub-genre of fantasy. Howard taught himself a little Gaelic, examined the Irish parts of his family history and began writing about Irish characters. There were four drafts of this essay, starting with a two-page outline and finishing as an 8,000-word essay. This story and the elements it uses would also be important in Howard's literary future. Howard is an ongoing inspiration for and influence on heavy metal music. [160][161] Strong female characters in Howard's works of fiction include the protofeminist Dark Agnes de Chastillon (first appearing in "Sword Woman", circa 1932–1934); the early modern pirate Helen Tavrel ("The Isle of Pirates' Doom", 1928), two pirates and Conan supporting characters, Bêlit ("Queen of the Black Coast", 1934) and Valeria of the Red Brotherhood ("Red Nails", 1936); as well as the Ukrainian mercenary Red Sonya of Rogatino ("The Shadow of the Vulture", 1934). [46][47] Howard lost his job at the newspaper in the same year and spent one month working in a post office before quitting over the low wages. Howard-related comic books continued to be published to the present day. [102][103] Though the publisher was "exceedingly interested" in the stories, the rejection letter explained that there was a "prejudice that is very strong over here just now against collections of short stories." Through Vinson, Howard was introduced to The Tattler, the newspaper of the Brownwood High School. [36][37][38] It was in Brownwood that he first met friends his own age who shared his interest not only for sports and history but also writing and poetry. [170], Howard had an almost photographic memory and could memorize long poems after only a few readings. But the ancient hero story was a glorification of significant elements in the culture that produced it. "The God in the Bowl" would also be rejected and so a potential fourth Conan story concerning Conan as a thief was abandoned at the synopsis stage. Born in Peaster, Texas, he was raised in Cross Plains. [87][88], It was also during this trip that Howard first conceived of the character of Conan. This was followed in the United States by a collection of Howard's stories, Skull-Face and Others (1946) and then the novel Conan the Conqueror (1950). [68] Stories sold to Fight Stories provided Howard with a market just as stable as Weird Tales. Morris left the rights to the widow of her cousin, Zora Mae Bryant, who gave control to her children, Jack Baum and Terry Baum Rogers. Ah to be alive in those days! Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas, on January 11, 1906, the son of Isaac, a doctor, and Hester, whose family enjoyed a long, entangled history with the United States. [31][183], Howard was both influenced by and an influence on his friend H. P Lovecraft. The problem of evil is solved by an impossibly omnipotent hero. All of his close friends had married and were immersed in their careers, Novalyne Price had left Cross Plains for graduate school, and his most reliable market, Weird Tales, had grown far behind on its payments. It was unbelievable. The Howard family had problems with money which may have been exacerbated by Isaac Howard investing in get-rich-quick schemes. The British metal band Bal-Sagoth is named after Howard's story "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth". Thereafter, until his death by suicide at age 30, Howard's writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he became proficient in several subgenres. [109] This novel combines elements of two previous Conan stories, "Black Colossus" and "The Scarlet Citadel," with Arthurian myth and provides an overview of Conan and the Hyborian age for the new British audience. The synthesis was never effected. (1984) for their game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The December 1922 issue featured two stories, "'Golden Hope Christmas" and "West is West," which won gold and silver prizes respectively. "[192] Roehm counters that none of the assertions made about Howard in that comment are true, although none of them are unique to Moorcock either. Robert E Howard is a fascinating, almost Hemingway-like writer, from the days "when men were men", when racks were stuffed with dozens of "Pulp" titles (so called because they use cheap "pulp" paper, however, it became a literary genre all by itself, a subcategory of mysteries, Science fiction and of course- … Also in 2006, a charity, Robert E. Howard Foundation, was created to promote further scholarship. Almost all speculation is in the form of amateur-psychoanalysis from people with no qualifications in the field. Many of his letters to H. P. Lovecraft ran for a dozen pages or more, filled with stories he had picked up from elderly Civil War veterans, Texas Rangers, and pioneers. Robert E. Howard (teljes nevén Robert Ervin Howard) (Peaster, Texas, 1906. január 22. Her doctor, a friend of Howard's father, advised her to end the relationship and get a job in a different state. July 1929 saw the debut of Sailor Steve Costigan in the pages of Fight Stories. This led Howard to see civilization as corrupting and society as a whole in decay. In television, the anthology series Thriller (1961) led the adaptations with an episode based on the short story "Pigeons from Hell". Although he told acquaintances that he had little hope for this novel, he had put a lot of effort into it. [9][10] She had spent her early years helping a variety of sick relatives, contracting tuberculosis in the process. Howard was born and raised in Texas. New businesses sprang up from scratch and the crime rate increased to match. In another novel twist, Conan and the other protagonists have, at best, a pyrrhic victory; this was rare for pulp magazines. A town such as Cross Plains was built by pioneers. By 1934 some of the markets killed off by the Depression had come back, and Weird Tales was over $1500 behind on payments to Howard. To remedy this, he took a job writing oil news for the local newspaper Cross Plains Review at $5 per column. Oscar Friend took over from Kline as literary agent and he was followed by his daughter Kittie West. [193] In Wizardry & Wild Romance, Moorcock has also written both that Howard "brought a brash, tough element to the epic fantasy that did as much to change the course of the American school away from previous writing and static imagery as Hammett, Chandler and the Black Mask pulp writers were to change the course of the American detective fiction" and that he "was never a commercially successful writer in his lifetime.