A belated Happy New Year.
The creator of sword-and-sorcery died way too soon.
But in a short period of time, he dreamed up an Atlantean barbarian-turned-king named Kull, and then peaked with Conan the Cimmerian.
Strap yourself in for a fascinating, but tragic ride.
Humble beginnings
Robert Ervin Howard was born on January 22, 1906, at Peaster; Texas; the only child of Isaac Mordecai and Hester Jane (Ervin) Howard. During the days of Robert the Bruce, the Ervins were a Highland clan; and because they followed and were granted favours by him, it was a family tradition that a male child in every generation be called Robert.
The Howard family moved around before settling in the town of Cross Plains. Robert began writing stories as a child, but composed his first professional piece aged fifteen.
Influences
The majority of his early stories had the writings of Harold Lamb and Talbot Mundy in mind, but none were completed or sold.
During his time at Howard Payne College in the fall of 1924, he sold three stories to Weird Tales: Spear and Fang, The Hyena and The Lost Race.
His success with 'weird fiction' is perhaps attributable to Aunt Mary Bohannon exposing him to ghost stories in his youth.
But he later wrote:
"No ghost story ever gave me the horrors as did the tales told by my grandmother. All the gloominess and dark mysticism of the Gaelic nature was hers, and there was no light and mirth in her. My grandmother was but one generation removed from South Ireland, and she knew by heart all the tales and superstitions of the folks, black and white, about her. As a child, my hair used to stand straight up when she would tell of wagon that moved down the Wilderness roads in the dark of the night, with never a horse drawing it - the wagon that was full of severed heads and dismembered limbs. The ghastly yellow dream horse that raced up and down the stairs of the grand old plantation house where a wicked woman lay dying; and also, the weeds growing rank about it, and the ghostly pigeons flying up from the rails of the verandah."
He also drew upon dreams.
"I am never, in these dreams of ancient times, a civilized man. Always I am the barbarian, the skin-clad, tousle-haired, light-eyed wild man, armed with a rude axe or sword, fighting the elements and wild beasts, or grappling with armoured hosts marching with the tread of civilized discipline from fallow fruitful lands and walled cities. When I dream of Rome I am always pitted against her, hating her with a ferocity that in my younger days persisted in my waking hours, so that I still remember, with some wonder, the savage pleasure with which I read, at the age of nine, the destruction of Rome by the Germanic Barbarians."
It's also worth noting that he and close friend H. P. Lovecraft bounced off each other.
Profit and loss
After leaving college, he returned home and continued to write. In 1925, Weird Tales published Spear and Fang and In the Forest of Villefere. He was paid $16 and $8 for Spear and Fang respectively, his first earnings in four years of writing. His fee for Wolfshead would have been $40, but when the artist assigned to illustrate misplaced the manuscript, with no carbon copy, Howard was forced to rewrite it from memory.
When receiving the proofs for Wolfshead back, he became disillusioned with writing and temporarily jerked soda. The long hours took their toll and in the fall of 1926, he got back on the horse by enrolling on a bookkeeping course at Howard Payne College. He graduated in August the following year, sold WT several more stories and ceased interest in bookkeeping, later admitting that the job was a bigger mystery to him after he finished the course than when he started.
Prior to 1929, earnings were meagre. In 1926 he trousered $50, 1927, $37.50; and 1928, $186. Most were from stories and poems appearing in WT. From Western and piracy to sport and character studies, a diverse range of genres were submitted to Adventure, Argosy, Thrills of the Jungle and Liberty.
However, sales were modest.
WT was his main source of income and by 1929, sales rose $772.50.
He focused mainly on dour Puritan swordsman Solomon Kane and King Kull of Valusia. The former had appeared in 1928 with the publication of Red Shadows, with the latter appearing in 1929 with The Shadow Kingdom.
Another character, Bran Mak Morn, the Pictish chieftain, was brought in Kings of the Night (1930).
The Steve Costigan series featured semi-regularly in Fiction House's Fight Stories after 1929.
In 1930, Popular Fiction Publishing Company (publishers of WT), launched Oriental Stories, and utilising his knowledge of ancient and medieval history, Howard concocted historical adventure stories about the Crusades to magazines.
Sales in 1930 rose to $1303.50 and it got even better in 1931, peaking to over $1500.
Magnum opus
In 1932, Howard created his most famous character, but the Depression dealt a severe blow.
Conan the Cimmerian debuted in WT, December 1932 with The Phoenix on the Sword (rewrite of unpublished Kull story By This Axe I Rule!)
Rather ironically, John Nicoletta adapted story for the big screen in 1997 as Kull the Conqueror. Apart from replacing Conan with Kull, plot was basically the same as The Hour of the Dragon.
Conan was an adventurer, progressing from thief, mercenary, pirate, and soldier to a kingship in Howard's fictional Hyborian Age, between the inundation of Atlantis and the dawn of recorded history. Conan was a literary descendant of the Conaire from the Fenian, or Ossianic, Irish myth cycle.
Slump
By mid-1932, things started to go wrong.
Clayton Publications (publishers of Strange Tales) and Fiction House had dropped their pulp lines, leaving Howard with only WT and Oriental Stories. OS was obviously in trouble, and checks for published stories were months overdue.
Recruiting fellow writer Otis Adelbert Kline as his literary agent, he began penning detective and Western stories. However, he continued to sell directly to WT, but sales for 1932 fell to $1067.60.
Most of his detective outings centred around Steve Harrison.
Lucky escape
On the night of December 29, 1933, Howard's brief career (and life) was nearly ended by an automobile accident. He was thrown so violently into the steering wheel that it bent almost double and his heart had to be braced up with digitalis.
Revival
The Depression continued to affect his livelihood and OS (re-titled Magic Carpet in 1933), folded in January 1934, leaving x amount of his stories unpublished.
However, Fiction House resumed publication of Action Stories, and Howard reacted by creating the Pecos Bill-esque cowboy Breckinridge Elkins. This proved to be extremely profitable for Action, and sales shot up to almost $1900.
A Witch Shall be Born
First appearing in WT, December 1934, a variation of Conan's crucifixion famously appeared in 1982 Schwarzenegger film.
The end is nigh
Early in 1935, his mother underwent a serious operation and never fully recovered. In fact, she spent the rest of her days in either a hospital or sanatorium.
With Dr. Howard's finances crippled by medical expenses and subsequent curtailment of his own practice, Robert was forced to decide whether or not to continue writing for WT. Although magazine was a good friend to him, payment was notoriously slow and at the time, PFPC owed him around $1000.
Red Tails would be the final Conan story written for WT, and other stories appearing in later issues were already completed.
As a side note, The Hour of the Dragon, (serialised in WT between December 1935 and April 1936), was later issued in book form as Conan the Conqueror.
The first issue of Giant-Size Conan (September 1974) began its own retelling and Dark Horse adapted epic in its entirety with two miniseries:
King Conan: The Hour of the Dragon (May - October 2013) and King Conan: The Conqueror (February - July 2014).
By Spring 1936, he enjoyed an all-time high in sales. Under the pseudonym Sam Walser, he begun a series of yarns for Spicy-Adventure Stories, focusing on Wild Bill Clanton.
Having cracked Popular Publications, John F. Byrne, the editor at Fiction House moved over to Argosy, and asked for a new series, not too dissimilar to Breckinridge Elkins.
Final months
Howard had been working on a novelette entitled Nekht Semerkeht, with protagonist Herando de Guzman, a member of Coronado's expedition of 1540-42 in search of the El Dorado which forever eluded Spanish conquistadors.
Suicide
When it appeared that his mother would not survive, Howard planned to end it all on no less than three occasions, but as her life continued, so did his.
Unfortunately, that changed on the morning of June 11, 1936, as upon receiving a negative response from the nurse attending his mother on the chances of her ever awaking again, he took a .380 Colt Automatic from the glove of his car (borrowed some time prior from friend Lindsey Tyson), and shot himself in the head.
He would live for another 8 hours, but nothing could be done. Mrs Howard never regained consciousness and passed on the following day.
On June 14, a double funeral service was held at Cross Plains First Baptist Church and they were both interred in Greenleaf Cemetery, Brownwood.
In his lifetime, he never saw any of his work printed in books.
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| Robert E. Howard (January 22, 1906 - June 11, 1936) |
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