Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard was an American author born on January 22, 1906, in Peaster, Texas. He gained prominence as a key figure in the development of the sword-and-sorcery subgenre of fantasy literature. Howard began writing at a young age, submitting stories to various pulp magazines during his high school years. His breakthrough came when his work was accepted by *Weird Tales*, leading to a prolific career where he created memorable characters, including Solomon Kane and King Kull. Howard is perhaps best known for his creation of Conan the Barbarian, which debuted in 1933 and has since become an iconic figure in popular culture. Despite his literary successes, he struggled with financial instability and personal challenges, including the depression that accompanied his mother's illness. Tragically, Howard's life ended in suicide in 1936, but his legacy endures through his influential contributions to fantasy and adventure fiction. His unique blend of historical settings with supernatural elements has left a lasting impact on the genre.
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Robert E. Howard
Writer
- Born: January 22, 1906
- Birthplace: Peaster, Texas
- Died: June 12, 1936
Biography
Robert Ervin Howard was born January 22, 1906, in Peaster, Texas, the son of Dr. Isaac Howard, a country physician, and Hester (Ervin) Howard. For the first decade of young Robert’s life, the family traveled throughout Texas, and briefly, in 1919, New Orleans. Later that year, when Howard was sixteen, the family settled in a permanent homestead in Cross Plains, southeast of Abilene, Texas. At this time, Howard was already writing the sort of heroic fiction that was then doing a thriving trade in the so-called “pulp magazines.”
While still in high school, in 1921, Howard began submitting these stories to various pulp editors. When his first submission was rejected by Western Story, Howard submitted it to Adventure, who likewise rejected it. Howard continued collecting rejection slips for three years until Weird Tales, the pulp magazine with which he would have his greatest success, accepted a short story about a Cro-Magnon warrior. Howard was only eighteen.
Howard followed his first success with sales to nearly all the major publishers of adventure fiction: Action Stories, Argosy, Fight Stories, Oriental Stories, Spicy Adventure, Sport Story, Strange Detective, and many more sales to Weird Tales. Though he was making a name for himself as a fiction writer, and already developing a circle of fans, the pulps paid so little that Howard could not yet support himself by his writing. He took a variety of jobs, and to please his father, who wanted him to have a trade to fall back on, studied bookkeeping at Howard Payne College in Brownwood, Texas.
Howard completed his course of study in 1927, but never had to rely on it, for the following year he published four stories in Weird Tales alone, and kept increasing the pace for the rest of his brief life. One of those stories of 1928 was the first appearance of Howard’s first recurring character, the swashbuckling Elizabethan Puritan Solomon Kane. In 1929, his first King Kull story appeared in Weird Tales, which proved a turning point not only in Howard’s career, but also in American fantasy adventure. Adapting his flair for historical fiction, Howard decided with the character of King Kull to invent a historical period before recorded history, before the sinking of Atlantis. In this fictional era he created a world in which courageous swordsmen faced supernatural foes—the “weird” element which the editors (and readers) of Weird Tales demanded. This novel combination created a subgenre of fantasy which later fans and critics dubbed “sword and sorcery.”
In the December, 1933, issue of Weird Tales Howard gave the world the sword-and-sorcery hero he was most famous for: Conan the Barbarian. Conan appeared in seventeen stories over the next three years. Then, in 1936, the peak year of his literary production, Howard suffered recurring depression over his mother’s ill health. When Mrs. Howard slipped into a coma after an operation, Howard committed suicide by putting a bullet through his head.