Robert Howard

Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American writer who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres.

He created the character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre.

Howard was born and raised in Texas.

He spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains, with some time spent in nearby Brownwood.

A bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of boxing and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding, eventually taking up amateur boxing.

From the age of nine he dreamed of becoming a writer of adventure fiction but did not have real success until he was 23.

Thereafter, until his death by suicide at age 30, Howard's writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he became proficient in several subgenres.

His greatest success occurred after his death.

Howard was born January 22, 1906, in Peaster, Texas, the only son of a traveling country physician, Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard, and his wife, Hester Jane Ervin Howard.

His early life was spent wandering through a variety of Texas cowtowns and boomtowns: Dark Valley (1906), Seminole (1908), Bronte (1909), Poteet (1910), Oran (1912), Wichita Falls (1913), Bagwell (1913), Cross Cut (1915), and Burkett (1917).

During Howard's youth his parents' relationship began to break down.

The Howard family had problems with money which may have been exacerbated by Isaac Howard investing in get-rich-quick schemes.

Hester Howard, meanwhile, came to believe that she had married below herself.

Soon the pair were actively fighting.

Hester did not want Isaac to have anything to do with their son.

She had a particularly strong influence on her son's intellectual growth.

She had spent her early years helping a variety of sick relatives, contracting tuberculosis in the process.

She instilled in her son a deep love of poetry and literature, recited verse daily and supported him unceasingly in his efforts to write.

Other experiences would later seep into his prose.

Although he loved reading and learning, he found school to be confining and began to hate having anyone in authority over him.

Experiences watching and confronting bullies revealed the omnipresence of evil and enemies in the world, and taught him the value of physical strength and violence.

As the son of the local doctor, Howard had frequent exposure to the effects of injury and violence, due to accidents on farms and oil fields combined with the massive increase in crime that came with the oil boom.

Firsthand tales of gunfights, lynchings, feuds, and Indian raids developed his distinctly Texan, hardboiled outlook on the world.

Sports, especially boxing, became a passionate preoccupation.

At the time, boxing was the most popular sport in the country, with a cultural influence far in excess of what it is today.

James J. Jeffries, Jack Johnson, Bob Fitzsimmons, and later Jack Dempsey were the names that inspired during those years, and he grew up a lover of all contests of violent, masculine struggle.

Voracious reading, along with a natural talent for prose writing and the encouragement of teachers, created in Howard an interest in becoming a professional writer.

From the age of nine he began writing stories, mostly tales of historical fiction centering on Vikings, Arabs, battles, and bloodshed.

One by one he discovered the authors who would influence his later work: Jack London and his stories of reincarnation and past lives, most notably The Star Rover (1915); Rudyard Kipling's tales of subcontinent adventures; the classic mythological tales collected by Thomas Bulfinch.

Howard was considered by friends to be eidetic, and astounded them with his ability to memorize lengthy reams of poetry with ease after one or two readings.

In 1919, when Howard was thirteen, Dr. Howard moved his family to the Central Texas hamlet of Cross Plains, and there the family would stay for the rest of Howard's life.

Howard's father bought a house in the town with a cash down payment and made extensive renovations.

That same year, sitting in a library in New Orleans while his father took medical courses at a nearby college, Howard discovered a book concerned with the scant fact and abundant legends surrounding an indigenous culture in ancient Scotland called the Picts.

Although a Conan novel was nearly published in 1934, Howard's stories were never collected during his lifetime.

The main outlet for his stories was Weird Tales, where Howard created Conan the Barbarian.

With Conan and his other heroes, Howard helped fashion the genre now known as sword and sorcery, spawning many imitators and giving him a large influence in the fantasy field.

Howard remains a highly read author, with his best works still reprinted, and is one of the best-selling fantasy writers of all time.

Howard's suicide and the circumstances surrounding it have led to speculation about his mental health.

His mother had been ill with tuberculosis her entire life, and upon learning she had entered a coma from which she was not expected to wake, he walked out to his car parked outside his kitchen window and shot himself in the head while sitting in the driver's seat.

He died eight hours later.