Robert Howard
The Greatest Pulp Fiction Writer in the Whole Wide World
I have lived in the Southwest all my life, yet most of my dreams are laid in cold,
giant lands of icy wastes and gloomy skies, and of wild, wind-swept fens and wilderness over which sweep great sea-winds, and which
are inhabited by shock-headed savages with light fierce eyes. With the exception of one dream, I am never, in these dreams
of ancient times, a civilized man. Always am I the barbarian, the skin-clad, tousle-haired, light-eyed wild man, armed with a
rude ax or sword, fighting the elements and wild beasts, or grappling with armored hosts marching with the tread of civilized discipline,
from fallow fruitful lands and walled cities. This is reflected in my writings, too, for when I begin a tale of old times,
I always find myself instinctively arrayed on the side of the barbarian, against the powers of organized civilization.
-- Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas in 1906. The son of one of the southwest's most prominent pioneer physicians, Howard's youth coincided with the last days of Americas frontier culture, a fact that would forever influence him and his stories.
Very early on, Howard steeped himself in the folklore and history of the southwest,
the Rio Grande valley. He became fascinated with the legendary virility and strength of the pioneers and delighted in the innate
poetry found in the exploration of virgin land.
At the age of 15, he began writing his yarns, tales of savage men living outside the rest of society, battling against other men,
for land and pride. Though the circumstances and settings changed, the hero, or anti-hero, was always somehow a shade of the
same creature--part savage, part nobleman, part poet, part pioneer--not unlike Howard himself.
Always described as an imposingly tall, dark, brawny man with piercing blue eyes,
Howard's characters were as much himself as they were pulled from his extraordinary imagination.
Howard's mentor and friend, the legendary father of pulp fiction H.P. Lovecraft, described
him as "a lover of the simpler, older world of barbarian and pioneer days, when courage and
strength took the place of subtlety and stratagem, and when a hardy, fearless race battled and bled...the real secret [of Howards stories] is that he himself is in every one of them..."
Lovecraft's view of Howard paints a rather imposing picture of this literary pioneer, the first
author of serialized fiction to ever earn a living as a full-time writer. His characters were simultaneously terrifying and
seductive--an immediate sensation with the readers of Weird Tales
, where Howards work was published for the first time when he was only 18. His most famous creation,
Conan, was a warrior and an adventurer. A brutal opponent in battle, Conan plundered villages and seized thrones from the
rulers who occupied Robert Howard's meticulously crafted prehistoric world, the centerpiece of the Conan series. Howard often said that Conan was not so much his creation as a character
that quite literally took over his head: "He simply stalked full grown out of oblivion and set me at work recording the saga
of his adventures."
If Conan was Howard's view of his own potential for raw, passionate savagery, then Solomon Kane was Howard's
perception of relentless, icy, and often bloody, nobility. Kane was an English Puritan,
a swashbuckler of sorts, who avenged wrongdoings in a dark, African netherworld. Like Conan, Kane was created in Howard's mind while still in his teens, several years before he would grace the pages of
Weird Tales
. The only character that Howard claimed to have created spontaneously was King Kull the Conqueror. Initially intended only as a minor character, Kull soon became so fascinating to
his creator that he, too, was given a series all his own.
Although it was his serialized stories, dubbed pulp fiction by its critics for its apparent lack of depth or import, that gave Howard his vast
following-- making him the most popular fiction writer in America from the late 1920s to the mid 1930s--he was a gifted poet and writer of Westerns. It was Conan, however, that truly
gave him his fame and his living. To understand the enormous popularity of Howard's creations is to understand the pulp fanzine phenomenon of the early part of this
century. Weird Tales
and its nearest competitors of the 1920s and 1930s have no equal today, save for perhaps the comic book or the popular serialized fiction
found in Readers Digest
..
Pulp fiction as a genre was not really taken seriously by scholars until the early
1970s when fantasy and science fiction experienced a resurrection in the United States.
It was only then that many scholars recognized the profound effect Howard and his peers had had on the world of literature.
Howard's influence, beyond academic realms, on modern popular culture, has been immeasurable.
Long after Howard's death, Conan lives on in the writings of L. Sprague de Camp, a controversial figure
among scholars of Howardiana for his view of Howard as maladjusted to the point of psychosis, but nevertheless, the man who has sole domain over the continuation of the Conan
myths. In addition to the ongoing popularity of the Conan stories, each of Howards most famous creations--Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane and Red Sonja--have been or are
in the process of being translated into films.
To this date, surprisingly little is known about the private Robert Howard. Only
one of his pulp fiction contemporaries ever met Howard; his mother, the somewhat obsessive focal point of his life, died from illness
within a day of his death; he never married, nor had children to carry on his legacy; most of those whom he considered his
closest friends have since died. There is only Novalyne Price-Ellis, the only woman
other than his mother who had a window into the true nature of this larger-than-life
spinner of yarns.
Novalyne Price-Ellis' book, One Who Walked Alone
, is dedicated to Howard. Hers is a loving portrayal, dramatically different from
the crazed, borderline psychopathic character depicted in the few Howard biographies that exist. Undoubtedly, scholars and academics
will debate these contrasting images for decades to come. One thing remains clear. The man who could create characters
as brutal as Conan, Kull and Solomon Kane are, and yet make them so seductive as to withstand more than six decades of literary
history, was truly the greatest pulp fiction writer in the whole wide world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Fiction Series (Listed by Character)
ACE JESSEL
The Apparition in the Prize Ring
Double Cross
AGNES DE CHASTILLON
Sword Woman
Blades for France
Mistress of Death
BRAN MA MORN
Bran Mak Morn
Kings of the Night
Men of the Shadows
A Song of the Race
Worms of the Earth
Untitled (A grew sky...)
BRECKINRIDGE ELKINS
Striped Shirts and Busted Hearts
Mountain Man
Meet Capn Kidd
Guns of the Mountain
A Gent from Bear Creek
The Feud Buster
The Road to Bear Creek
The Scalp Hunter
Cupid from Bear Creek
The Haunted Mountain
Educate or Bust
War on Bear Creek
When Bear Creek Came to Chawed Ear
The Apache Mountain War
The Conquerin Hero of the Humbolts
An Elkins Never Surrenders
High Horse Rampage
Mayhem and Taxes
The Peaceful Pilgrim
Pistol Politics
The Riot at Cougar Paw
Sharps Gun Serenade
Texas John Alden (A Ringtailed Tornado)
While Smoke Rolled
BUCKNER J. GRIMES
Knife-River Prodigal
A Man-Eating Jeopard
BUTCH GORMAN and BRENT KIRBY
The Hand of the Black Goddess
Sons of Hate
CONAN
The Thing in the Crypt
The Tower of the Elephant
The Hall of the Dead
The God in the Bowl
Rogues in the House
The Hand of Nergal
The City of Skulls
The People of the Summit
Conan and the Cenotaph (The Curse of the Monolith)
The Blood-Stained God
The Frost-Giants Daughter
The Lair of the Ice Worm
Queen of the Black Coast
The Vale of Lost Women
The Castle of Terror
The Snout in the Dark
Hawks Over Shem
Black Colossus
Shadows in the Moonlight
Conan, Man of Destiny (The Road of the Eagles)
A Witch Shall Be Born
Black Tears
Shadows in Zamboula
The Devil in Iron
The Flame-Knife
The People of the Black Circle
The Slithering Shadow
Drums of Tombalku
The Pool of the Black One
Conan the Buccaneer
Red Nails
Jewels of Gwahlur
Beyond the Black River
The Black Stranger (The Treasure of Tranicos)
The Phoenix on the Sword
The Scarlet Citadel
The Hour of the Dragon (Conan the Conqueror)
The Return of Conan
The Witch of the Mists
Black Sphinx of Nebthu
Red Moon of Zembabwei
Conan of the Isles
CORMAC FITZGEOFFREY
Hawks of Outremer
The Blood of Belshazzar
The Slave Princess
CORMAC MAC ART
The Night of the Wolf
Swords of the Northern Sea
The Temple of Abomination
Tigers of the Sea
DE MONTOUR
In the Forest of Villefere
Wolfshead
DENNIS DORGAN
Alleys of Darkness
Alleys of Treachery
Cultured Cauliflowers
Iron-Clad Fists
A New Game for Dorgan
Sailor Dorgan and the Destiny Gorilla
Sailor Dorgan and the Jade Monkey
Sailor Dorgan and the Turkish Menace
Sailor Dorgan and the Yellow Cobra
A Two-Fisted Santa Claus
FRANCIS X. GORDON (EL BORAK)
Blood of the Gods
The Coming of El Borak
The Country of the Knife
The Daughter of Erlik Khan
El Borak
Hawk of the Hills
Intrigue in Kudistan
The Iron Terror
Khoda Khans Tale
The Land of Mystery
North of Khyber
A Power Among the Islands
The Shunned Castle
Son of the White Wolf
Swords of the Hills
Three-Bladed Doom
Untitled (Gordon, the American...)
JAMES ALLISON
Akram the Mysterious
Brachan the Kelt
The Garden of Fear
The Guardian of the Idol
Marchers of Valhalla
Untitled (Long, long ago...)
The Valley of the Worm
JOHN SILENT
The Castle of the Devil
Redflame
KID ALLISON
College Socks
The Drawing Card
Fighting Nerves
Fistic Psychology
The Good Knight
The Jinx
Man With the Mystery Mitts
The Texas Wildcat
A Tough Nut to Crack
Untitled (Huh? I was so...)
KIRBY ODONNELL
The Treasures of Tartary
Swords of Shahrazar
The Trail of the Blood-Stained God
KULL
Exile of Atlantis
The Shadow Kingdom
Black Abyss
Delcardes Cat
The Skull of Silence
Riders Beyond the Sunrise
By This Axe I Rule
The Striking of the Gong
Swords of the Purple Kingdom
Wizard and Warrior
The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune
The King and the Oak
Kings of the Night
PIKE BEARFIELD
The Diablos Trail
Gents from the Pecos
Gents on the Lynch
The Riot at Bucksmart
SAILOR STEVE COSTIGAN
Alleys of Peril
The Battling Sailor
Blow the Chinks Down
Blue River Blues
Breed of Battle
The Bull Dog Breed
By the Land of the Shark
The Champ of the Forecastle
Circus Fists
Dark Shanghai
Fist and Fang
Flying Knuckles
General Ironfist
Hard-Fisted Sentiment
SAILOR STEVE COSTIGAN (cont.)
The Honor of the Ship
Night of Battle
The Pit of the Serpent
Sailor Costigan and the Swami
Sailors Grudge
The Sign of the Snake
The Sluggers Game
Sluggers of the Beach
Texas Fists
The TNT Punch
Untitled (It was the end...)
Untitled (The night Sailor Steve...)
Vikings of the Gloves
Waterfront Fists
Winner Take All
SOLOMON KANE
Skulls in the Stars
The Right Hand of Doom
Red Shadows
Rattle of Bones
The Castle of the Devil
The Moon of Skulls
The One Black Stain
Blades of the Brotherfhood
The Blue Flame of Vengeance
Hills of the Dead
Hawk of Basti
The Return of Sir Richard Grenville
Wings in the Night
The Footfalls Within
The Children of Asshur
Solomon Kanes Homecoming
Deaths Black Riders
STEPHEN COSTIGAN
Skull-Face
Taverel Manor
STEVE ALLISON (THE SONORA KID)
Brotherly Advice
Desert Rendezvous
The Devils Joker
Knife, Bullet and Noose
North of Khyber
A Power Among the Islands
Red Curls and Bobbed Hair
The Shunned Castle
Sonora Kid -- The Cowhand
The Sonora Kids Winning Hand
Untitled (A blazing sun...)
Untitled (The Hades Saloon...)
Untitled (The hot Arizona sun...)
Untitled (Madge Meraldson...)
Untitled (Steve Allison settled...)
Untitled (The way it came about...)
The West Tower
STEVE BENDER, WEARY MCGRAW, and THE WHALE
The Ghost With the Silk Hat
Untitled (William Aloysius...)
Westward Ho!
The Wild Man
STEVE HARRISON
The Black Moon
Fangs of Gold
Graveyard Rats
The House of Suspicion
Lord of the Dead
The Mystery of Tannernoe Lodge
Names in the Black Book
The Silver Heel
Untitled Synopsis (Steve Harrison...)
The Voice of Death
TERENCE VULMEA
Black Vulmeas Vengeance
Swords of the Red Brotherhood
TURLOGH DUBH OBRIEN
The Dark Man
The Gods of Bat-Sagoth
The Shadow of the Hun
Untitled (The Dane came...)
WILD BILL CLANTON
Desert Blood
The Dragon of Kao Tsu
Murderers Grog
The Purple Heart of Erlik
She Devil
Ship in Mutiny
Last Modified 12-December-1996
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