Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was a writer of fantasy, horror, pulp and historical adventure stories published mainly in Weird Tales magazine in the 1930s. He was born in Peaster, Texas, the son of Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard and Hester Jane Ervin Howard. His family had lived in various places in south, east and west Texas, as well as western Oklahoma, before settling in Cross Plains in central Texas in 1919.

Howard began to write at an early age of 15, and was first published at age 19 when his story "Spear and Fang" appeared in the July 1925 edition of Weird Tales magazine. His first 'cover' occurred in 1926.

On June 11, 1936 Robert E. Howard learned that his tubercular mother was unlikely to regain consciousness from her coma. He settled into the front seat of his car with a borrowed .38 Colt automatic and shot himself in the head. His mother died the following day, and they shared a funeral on June 14th. Both are buried in Greenleaf Cemetery in Brownwood, Texas.

Howard wrote stories in many genres, but his most famous were sword and sorcery, a genre of fantasy based on war, fighting and magic. Howard also wrote stories about King Kull, Solomon Kane, and Bran Mak Morn. One of his more famous, if not the most famous of his creations were the stories written on Conan, the barbarian from the mountains of Cimmeria. Conan first appeared in "The Phoenix on the Sword" in December 1932 in Weird Tales.
 
 

Howard's prose is straightforward, colorful, and exciting. more than subtle and literary, and it attempts to entertain rather than instruct, but it is not without sophistication. Howard tells of worlds where violence is usually the best solution to problems, and where gold, jewels, and beautiful women are often the hero's reward; yet, distancing himself from the more pedestrian emulators and epigons Howard's works have a shade of macabre, even malignant humour in contrasting his square jawed heroes' efforts with their ultimate futility in the greater picture of things, and yet, as true Nietzschean heroes, they accept their toil of suffering, bloodshed, passion and pain without even lamenting or complaining about it, thus achieving ultimate freedom from it.

Howard had a passion for history, in letter to Harold Peece, he explains:

October 20, 1928

"I wish I had money. I’d take several courses in anthropology and the various phases of antiquity, and spend the rest of my life exploring ruins in out-of-the-way corners of the globe. The future of the race interests me little; the present but a little more; the past, greatly. An occultist of my acquaintance, who has gone deeper in the matter than any man I ever knew, says I have a very ancient soul, am a reincarnated Atlantean, in fact! Maybe if there’s anything to this soul business, or to reincarnation, that theory is maybe right. Sure I live in the dust of the past and my dreams are seldom of present or future, but I am ever treading roads of the dim ages and strange are some of the figures whom I meet and strange the shapes who stare at me."

July 23, 1935

I've been concentrating on adventure stuff recently, trying to break into that field permanently. I've made a start, with yarns published in Action, Thrilling Adventures, and Top-Notch; got a couple of covers designs in a row with Top-Notch and am toiling manfully to become a regular contributor. Sent a three-part serial to Wright yesterday: "Red Nails", which I devoutly hope he'll like. A Conan yarn, and the grimmest, bloodiest and most merciless story of the series so far. Too much raw meat, maybe, but I merely portrayed what I honestly believe would be the reactions of certain types of people in the situations on which the plot of the story hung. It may sound fantastic to link the term "realism" with Conan; but as a matter of fact--his supernatural adventures aside--he is the most realistic character I ever evolved. He is simply a combination of a number of men I have known, and I think that's why he seemed to step full-grown into my consciousness when I wrote the first yarn of the series. Some mechanism in my sub-consciousness took the dominant characteristics of various prizefighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers, and honest workmen I had come in contact with, and combining them all, produced the amalgamation I call Conan the Cimmerian.

At any given time, I'll pick up Howard's stories and read them. His words hold a magic and style that simply captivate. I hang on every word, even though I've read the story hundreds of times over. Robert E. Howard had a way with words, so I see it fitting to end this particular passage with one of his quotes:

“Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,” the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. “Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.”
-Beyond The Black River