Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard (1906–1936) was an American writer best known as the creator of Conan the Barbarian, one of the most influential heroes in fantasy literature. A prolific author of the pulp magazine era, Howard wrote fantasy, supernatural horror, historical adventure, Westerns, boxing stories, and poetry. His vivid imagination, forceful prose, and fascination with courage, freedom, civilization, and the struggle for survival helped shape the development of modern heroic fantasy. Howard was born on January 22, 1906, in Peaster, Texas, the only child of Isaac Mordecai Howard, a country physician, and Hester Jane Ervin Howard. During his childhood, the family moved frequently throughout Texas before settling in Cross Plains in 1919. The small Central Texas town became his principal home and provided much of the atmosphere for his observations of rural life and the American frontier. From an early age, Howard was an avid reader and began writing stories while still a child, drawing inspiration from history, mythology, adventure fiction, and the lives of legendary warriors. As a teenager, Howard became determined to earn his living as a professional writer. He submitted stories to magazines while continuing his education and studying bookkeeping at Howard Payne College in Brownwood, Texas. His first professional fiction sale was Spear and Fang, a prehistoric adventure story published in Weird Tales in July 1925. Although magazine writing offered uncertain income and demanded considerable discipline, Howard continued producing stories at an extraordinary pace, gradually establishing himself among the notable contributors to the American pulp fiction market. Weird Tales became particularly important to Howard's career. The magazine published his fantasy and horror stories alongside works by writers such as H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Howard and Lovecraft developed a lengthy correspondence, exchanging ideas about history, mythology, civilization, and the supernatural despite never meeting in person. Howard's own fiction combined physical action with a strong sense of historical depth, often placing extraordinary individuals in violent worlds where survival depended on strength, determination, and adaptability. Howard created several memorable characters before introducing his most famous hero. Solomon Kane, a grim English Puritan who travels through dangerous lands fighting evil, appeared in stories beginning in 1928. King Kull, an exiled warrior who becomes ruler of the ancient kingdom of Valusia, followed in 1929. Howard also developed Bran Mak Morn, a Pictish king resisting Roman expansion, and El Borak, a Texas-born adventurer operating in the Middle East. These characters allowed him to explore different historical periods and imaginary civilizations while developing themes that would become central to his fantasy writing. In December 1932, Weird Tales published The Phoenix on the Sword, the first appearance of Conan the Cimmerian, popularly known as Conan the Barbarian. Howard imagined Conan as a warrior from the fictional prehistoric Hyborian Age, a world of kingdoms, ancient ruins, political intrigue, sorcery, and supernatural danger. Unlike many traditional fantasy heroes, Conan was not a noble knight bound by established institutions. He was resourceful, independent, suspicious of authority, and guided largely by his instincts and personal code. Through Conan and the stories surrounding him, Howard helped establish the form of fantasy later known as sword and sorcery, which emphasizes individual heroes, dangerous adventures, magic, and immediate personal conflicts. Howard's literary range extended far beyond heroic fantasy. He wrote Westerns, historical adventures, sports fiction, detective stories, humorous tales, and supernatural horror. His characters included Sailor Steve Costigan, a hard-hitting sailor whose boxing adventures often took comic turns, and Breckenridge Elkins, a larger-than-life frontier character featured in humorous Western stories. Howard's ability to adapt his style to different genres demonstrated both his versatility and his practical need to sell stories to a variety of magazines. He also wrote poetry, frequently exploring themes of historical memory, mortality, lost civilizations, and the passage of time. Although Howard achieved a measure of professional success, his life remained closely tied to his family and to the town of Cross Plains. He never married and continued living with his parents while supporting himself through writing. His mother's prolonged illness, particularly during the final period of her life, placed him under severe emotional strain. On June 11, 1936, when he learned that she was not expected to recover from a coma, Howard died by suicide at the age of thirty. His mother died later that day. His death abruptly ended a career that had lasted little more than a decade, leaving behind a substantial body of published and unpublished work. During his lifetime, Howard was known primarily as a successful pulp fiction writer rather than as the author of major books. His reputation grew considerably after his death, as publishers collected and reissued his stories, introducing Conan and his other characters to new generations of readers. Subsequent editions, comic books, films, and other adaptations expanded the reach of his imagined worlds. His work also influenced later fantasy writers and helped establish conventions that became familiar in fantasy literature, role-playing games, and popular adventure storytelling. Robert E. Howard remains a significant figure in twentieth-century popular literature. His stories are recognized for their momentum, vivid settings, dramatic conflicts, and uncompromising protagonists. While Conan the Barbarian remains his most famous creation, his wider body of work reveals a writer fascinated by the rise and fall of civilizations, the tension between freedom and power, and the persistence of human struggle throughout history. His short life limited the time available to develop his literary career, but his imaginative legacy continues to shape the fantasy genre.