H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) and Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) are two pillars in the New World Gothic castle of fantastic fiction. They are especially interesting in their surprising aspects. They both died young, they both lived sheltered and geographically-constricted lives, they both absorbed influences from wide and deep sources which they then used to create wonderfully complex and vast universes that they have shared with writers long after their passing, and they both lived for sharing their creative energies with other writers through letters and encouraging words, including each other.
Lovecraft the New Englander drew from Poe, Machen, and Dunsany to fashion the crucible from which his Cthulhu Mythos emerged, the indifferent and destructive universe of what humans would call monsters from beyond space and time. He was a master at delineating the gulf between what terrible fate was suggested and why it could not be described in all its horror.
Robert E. Howard the Texan connected to semi-mythic history and the existential journey of one determined man through all the dangers of men and beasts. He is the father of an American sword and sorcery, a juxtaposition of power that seems illogical but also somehow inevitable, almost an allegory of the wars of the 20th Century -- what you cannot see may kill you from afar, and what you can see may kill you up close. The survivor must be ready and skilled and wary at all times.
The legacies of these two writers last and grow to this day in literature, art, and film, even language. We stock their writings and associated contemporary writers as well as some of the more interesting and provocative writers working with the generous heritage that Lovecraft and Howard bequeathed to an increasingly uneasy world.
Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author
Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author
PUBLICATION DATE IS MARCH 15, 2025!
Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) is most widely known today as the creator of Conan the Cimmerian, more popularly referred to as Conan the Barbarian. However, he also wrote across a wide array of genres for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, including westerns, sports stories (boxing), adventures, supernatural horror, and even humor. Howard also created many other popular characters such as King Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, Steve Costigan, and Breckenridge Elkins. More importantly, he created two specific subgenres of fiction: sword and sorcery (sometimes referred to as heroic fantasy) and weird westerns.
Born and raised in Texas, Robert E. Howard began his writing career after his family settled in the small Central Texas town of Cross Plains. His first professional sale came from the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1925, and over the next eleven years he wrote hundreds of stories and an equal number of poems. With this prolific body of stories, he was among the most lauded pulp authors of that era. It has been said, and rightly so, that the secret to his success was that there was a bit of Howard in every one of his characters, and because Howard was a Texan, even Conan shows elements of the Texan in his persona.
Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author details the many trials and tribulations he faced as he became—and remained—a full-time writer while dealing with an aging father and caring for a mother who was dying of tuberculosis. The book both chronicles his personal life and demonstrates how the one driving force in Robert E. Howard’s life—forming the foundation for all of his characters and stories—was his personal pursuit of freedom. He lived for his freedom, he wrote as a means to attain that freedom, and, while it may sound strange, he also died tragically by his own hand in that very same pursuit at the young age of 30.
WILLARD M. OLIVER is a professor of criminal justice at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas; is a retired major in the Military Police Corps, United States Army; and is an Operation Desert Storm veteran. He is the author/editor of thirty books including one previous biography, August Vollmer: The Father of American Policing. He lives with his family in Huntsville, Texas.