Robert E. Howard and the Amateur Press (Part 5) by Bobby Derie

5: Fan Mail and The Hyborian Age

This morning I took out a big registered envelope with a “War Department” letter-head. I had visions of me shouldering a Springfield already, but it was from a gentleman named Barlow, at Fort Benning, Georgia, asking me for my autograph, for which purpose he enclosed a blank sheet of paper and a stamped self-addressed envelope.  (CL2.273)

Robert E. Howard’s interaction with the burgeoning science fiction fandom went beyond praising his friend’s stories or receiving the occasional solicitation for material from for inclusion in a fanzine. In “The Eyrie” of Weird Tales and “The Cauldron” of Strange Tales, Howard was often picked out as a favorite by the readers who wrote in, but now that his name (and, perhaps more importantly, his mailing address) was being spread about by Lovecraft, E. Hoffmann Price, and others, Howard began to interact with his fans directly.

Robert H. Barlow was perhaps the first to get in touch, having already been a correspondent with H. P. Lovecraft and part of the circulation list for Lovecraft’s stories. As a fan, Barlow was an avid collector who seems to have seldom flinched from asking for autographs, original manuscripts, and art from various writers, and a surprising amount of the time seems to have gotten them. Howard sent Barlow typescripts of “The Phoenix on the Sword”, “The Scarlet Citadel”, “Black Colossus”, “Iron Shadows in the Moon”, and “A Witch Shall Be Born” (CL2.519, 3.219), as well as a letter from Henry S. Whitehead (CL3.47), but begged off parting with his collection of Hugh Rankin illustrations (CL3.212-213, 215).

Robert H. Barlow

Their correspondence seems to have been mostly slight but cordial, with Howard praising Barlow’s fiction in The Fantasy Fan (CL3.215), and thanking him for the output of the young fan’s own amateur press: Frank Belknap Long’s The Goblin Tower (CL3.394), Lovecraft’s The Cats of Ulthar, and Barlow’s own amateur journal, The Dragon-Fly (CL3.417). Barlow in turn seems to have appreciated Howard’s generosity as well as his writing ability; collaborating with Lovecraft on The Battle That Ended The Century that included “Two-Gun Bob” (authored anonymously and circulated privately among Lovecraft’s correspondents, CL3.248), and authored the touching elegy R.E.H., which appeared in Weird Tales.

Emil Petaja appears to have contacted Howard through The Fantasy Fan, or possibly a common correspondent like H. P. Lovecraft, in late 1934. Petaja dedicated his poem “Echo from the Ebon Isles” (also published as “The Warrior”) to Howard, who replied:

I feel deeply honored that a poem of such fine merit should be dedicated to me. You seem to grasp the motif of my stories, the compelling idea-force behind them which is the only excuse for their creation, more completely than any one I have yet encountered. This fine sonnet reveals your understanding of the abstractions I have tried to embody in these tales. The illustration fits the text splendidly, and partakes of its high merit. I foresee an enviable future for you as a poet and artist. (CL3.259-260)

A commendation and encouragement that Petaja would remember decades later, and quote in the introduction to his poetry collections As Dream and Shadow (1972). For his own part, in response to requests for manuscripts Howard sent Petaja a copy of his poem “Cimmeria” (CL3.260), as well as an unknown manuscript, on the back of which was written the draft to “Black Canaan” (CL3.304). Their correspondence lasted at least a year, with Howard offering general praise, encouragement, and thanks, adding in their final extant letter:

I am much interested in the magazine you and Mr. Rimel are contemplating launching; I wish you the best of luck with it, and would be more than glad to contribute to it. (CL3.369)

Such offers to fanzines were genuine, though Howard continued to focus on paying markets, and Howard seemed just as happy to answer questions as he was to provide rejected stories. One fan, Alvin Earl Perry, was a regular reader of Weird Tales and a great fan of Conan the Cimmerian, who landed several letters in “The Eyrie” which Howard could not have missed, particularly one plaudit from the October 1934 issue:

Robert E. Howard held me enthralled throughout his masterpiece, The Devil in Iron. With each succeeding tale Howard becomes better; his unique character, Conan, is the greatest brainchild yet produced in weird fiction, even overshadowing Moore’s Northwest Smith and Quinn’s dynamic little Frenchmen, Jules de Grandin. Yet, despite Howard’s fine work, I believe that the best tale in the current WT is The Three Marked Pennies. (WGP 60)

In 1935, Perry wrote to Howard, as well as E. Hoffmann Price and A. W. Bernal, seeking biographical information for a series in the Fantasy Magazine, and Howard obliged with a letter of his own, which became “A Biographical Sketch of Robert E. Howard”, published in July 1935.

The final, and arguably the most important, fans to contact Robert E. Howard were P. Schuyler Miller and Dr. John D. Clark, who had collaborated on “A Probable Outline of Conan’s Career”, one of the premier efforts in Howard studies. Miller had written Howard in early 1936, and the Texan replied in a letter dated 10 March 1936, providing many additional details and ruminations regarding the Cimmerian, as well as a copy of Howard’s own essay, “The Hyborian Age,” which the Phantagraph had begun to serialize in February. (CL3.428-431)

Howard’s death in June threw off the serialization of “The Hyborian Age,” which was never completed. Donald Wollheim and Wilson Shepherd planned to issue the complete “The Hyborian Age” as a separate booklet (LRBO 280, 334, 338, 353), and then considered a book publication of Howard’s fiction, which Lovecraft provided advice on until shortly before his own death in 1937. (LRBO 362, 364, 365, 367, 370) Finally, Wollheim collaborated with John Michel, Forrest J. Ackerman, Russell Hofkins, and Myrtle R. Douglas to published the whole of “The Hyborian Age” as a chapbook, including Miller and Clark’s “A Probable Outline of Conan’s Career.” (THA viii)

Bob Howard was survived by his father, who seemed to be little aware of his son’s dealings with fandom. In 1943, a copy of The Hyborian Age was provided to Howard’s father by E. Hoffmann Price, who noted:

The publishers, Hodgkins, Wollheim, Ackerman, Michel, are—at least, Wollheim and Ackerman were—leading fantasy fans, outstanding collectors and fanciers of weird fiction. Probably all or most of them are now in the army. I no longer hear of them, or from them. But the opinions these people have assembled in this booklet regarding Robert’s work are widely share; this is a fair & representative expression of esteem. So I am happy to offer it to you. (CLIH 188)

Robert E. Howard’s death was not the end of his appearance in the fan papers; his posthumous career began with a memorial from H. P. Lovecraft in the Fantasy Magazine and the installments of “The Hyborian Age” in the Phantagraph, but came to include previously unpublished poems, letters, and stories. In the decades to come, an amateur press association and fanzines dedicated to Howard and his creations appeared, and would proliferate, continuing to the current day. In a real way, Howard’s involvement with amateur journalism, culminating in his association with the growing fandom community, would help to establish his legacy as much as his professional fiction.

Works Cited

AMTF  A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2 vols., Hippocampus Press, 2009)

BT       Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard (REH Foundation, 2013)

CL       Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index & Addenda, REH Foundation, 2007 – 2015)

CLIH    Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard (REH Foundation, 2011)

HAJ     The History of Amateur Journalism (The Fossils, 1957)

LC       The Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard (Berkley Windhover, 1976)

LRBO  Letters to Robert Bloch and Others (Hippocampus Press, 2015)

LRS     Letters to Richard F. Searight (Necronomicon Press, 1992)

LS        “Robert E. Howard and the Lone Scouts” by Rob Roehm, in The Dark Man (vol. 7, no. 1; 2012)

LSL      Lone Scout of Letters (Roehm’s Room Press, 2011)

PWM   Robert E. Howard: The Power of the Writing Mind (Mythos Books, 2003)

SFTP   So Far the Poet & Other Writings (REH Foundation, 2010)

THA     The Hyborian Age Facsimile Editions (Skelos Press, 2015)

TJ        “The Junto: Being a Brief Look at the Amateur Press Association Robert E. Howard Partook In as a Youth” by Glenn Lord, in Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (Hippocampus Press, 2006)

UL       Uncollected Letters (Necronomicon Press, 1986)

WGP   Robert E. Howard: World’s Greatest Pulpster (Dennis McHaney, 2005)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Robert E. Howard and the Amateur Press (Part 4) by Bobby Derie

4: Fan Press: Marvel Tales, The Fantasy Fan, Fantasy Magazine, and The Phantagraph

By the way—I enclose a circular from a new weird magazine to which Clark Ashton Smith and I [are] contributing. There is no pay for contributions, but we are glad of a chance to get printed copies of the tales all other magazines have rejected. [...] First issue of The Fantasy Fan came the other day. It looks sadly amateurish, though the editor promises better things to come.

— H. P. Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, 24 Jun 1933, AMTF 2.620, 630

Robert E. Howard’s correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft introduced him into a wider circle than any he had ever known—professional writers and fans from across the United States, like E. Hoffmann Price, R. H. Barlow, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith. As part of the “group,” Howard shared in the circulation of manuscripts, criticism of stories published and unpublished, and tips on the state of the industry and potential new markets for industrious pulpsters to splash...even if they didn’t always pay.

Pulps brought science fiction, fantasy, and weird fiction to the masses; while science fiction novels can trace their genesis to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), and dime-novels could reach a mass audience, pulp fiction created communities of fans who, instead of interacting solely through letter-columns, began to meet, organize in their own clubs and mailing lists...and publish. The products of the fan press are distinguishable from any other form of amateur journalism or literary “small magazines” only in focus, not in the material product produced, and must have reminded Howard clearly of the amateur papers produced by himself and his friends, if more ambitious and better-presented.

Charles D. Hornig produced the first issue of The Fantasy Fan in September 1933; the first of the fan magazines dedicated to weird fiction. Clark Ashton Smith sent Howard a copy of the first issue, and Howard replied in a letter from October that same year:

Thanks for the copy of Fantasy Fan. I subscribed for a year; a dollar is little enough to pay for the privilege of reading stories by Lovecraft, Derleth and yourself. I enjoyed very much your “Kingdom of the Worm”. It is an awesome and magnificent and somber word picture you have drawn of the haunted land of Antchar. (CL3.136, cf. 141-142)

Howard’s letter asking for a subscription was likewise full of praise for the magazine (which Hornig would quote in the November 1933 issue).

Thanks for the copy of The Fantasy Fan. I found it very interesting, and think it has a good future. Anybody ought to be willing to pay a dollar for the privilege of reading, for a whole year, the works of Lovecraft, Smith, and Derleth. I am glad to see that you announce a poem by Smith in the next issue. He is a poet second to none. I also hope you can persuade Lovecraft to let you use some of his superb verse. Weird poetry possesses an appeal peculiar to itself and the careful use of it raises the quality of any magazine. I liked very much the department of “True Ghost Stories” and hope you will continue it. The world is full of unexplained incidents and peculiar circumstances, the logical reasons of which are often so obscure and hidden that they are lent an illusion of the supernatural. Enclosed find my check for a year’s subscription. I shall be glad to submit some things, if you wish. (CL3.139-140, cf.145)

Frank Frazetta's artwork for
"The Frost Giant's Daughter"

Howard by this point was working full-time as a professional writer, but following Lovecraft’s suggestion of submitting “tales all other magazines have rejected” (AMTF 2.620), sent Hornig a “The Frost King’s Daughter”—which originally had been written as a tale of Conan the Cimmerian, entitled “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” and submitted to Weird Tales, where it was rejected (CL2.315, 329); so he changed the hero to Amra and retitled it. Hornig accepted the story, which was published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan as “Gods of the North.” Lovecraft wrote to Hornig in praise of the story (“Glad to see the interesting tale by Robert E. Howard” UL 13).

A few months later, Howard submitted some verse to Hornig, which was duly published in The Fantasy Fan in September 1934 as “The Voices Waken Memory,” and in January 1935 as “Voices of the Night: 2. Babel”, which caused Lovecraft to write to Richard F. Searight:

Yes—the Wooley & Howard material is really admirable. Both writers are genuine poets, & really ought to be able to have verse in the remunerative magazines right along. Most of Two-Gun’s verse has never been submitted for publication. Some of it really marvelous in its savage, barbaric potency. (LRS 48)

For the most part, however, Howard’s interaction with The Fantasy Fan was mostly as a subscriber who wrote the occasional letter in praise of his friend’s writings, praising the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith (CL3.149, 150) and William Lumley (CL3.195, 197), Lovecraft’s stories and article-series Supernatural Horror in Literature (CL3.192, 194, 274-275), the fiction of R. H. Barlow’s (CL3.215) and Emil Petaja (CL3.260), and sometimes several at once:

Smith’s poem in the March issue was splendid, as always. By all means, publish as many of his poems as possible; I would like to see more by Lumley, and it would be a fine thing if you could get some of Lovecraft’s poetry. (CL3.203)

Yet, Howard never became as involved with The Fantasy Fan as he was with The Junto, nor was he ever a prolific contributor—understandable, as he was working to write salable material at the time. An example of Howard’s distance from the magazine can be seen in how he kept out of the kerfuffle in “The Boiling Point” (The Fantasy Fan’s letter column) between Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and a young Forrest J. Ackerman, limiting himself to a private comment to Lovecraft:

I’ve also been considerably amused by the controversy raging there, apparently precipitated by this Ackerman gentleman — I believe that’s the name. It’s always been a strange thing to me why some people think they have to attack fiction they don’t care for personally. If it was an article on government or sociology, dealing with some vital national problem, it might be different. But it seems rather absurd to me for one to attack a fiction story that has no connection with everyday problems at all. If Ackerman doesn’t like Smith’s stories, why, no law compels him to read them. (CL3.192)

The Fantasy Fan ran monthly from September 1933 to February 1935, running for 18 issues in total. Subscriptions for a year (12 issues) was a dollar; Howard subscribed around November 1933, and probably the first issue he received was December 1933. His subscription would then have run out around November of 1934, and apparently he sent another check to renew, but of course the publication ceased a few months later. Hornig, to his credit, sent Howard a “refund” on his subscription in the form of stamps covering the remainder, to which Howard replied:

I’m very sorry to learn that The Fantasy Fan has to be discontinued. I enjoyed the magazine very much, and had hoped that it would be able to carry on. It doesn’t seem quite fair for the editor of a fan magazine to have to bear all the financial loss of the magazine’s failure. In the case of my unfinished subscription, at least, let’s split the expense. I’m taking the liberty of returning half the stamps you sent me. I got all my money’s worth and more out of the pleasure I derived from the magazine. (CL3.305)

Having been involved in the amateur press a bit himself, Howard was probably very conscious of the cost of producing such periodicals, hence his magnanimous gesture.

In the fall of 1933, as Hornig was first issuing The Fantasy Fan, small publisher William F. Crawford was sending around a circular for a magazine to be titled Unusual Stories, soliciting material from Lovecraft and his correspondents, including Howard:

I hope Crawford has good fortune with Unusual Stories. I let him have a yarn entitled “The Garden of Fear”, dealing with one of my various conceptions of the Hyborian and post-Hyborian world. He seemed to like the story very well, and I intend to let him have some more on the same order if he can use them. I have an idea which I’d like to work out in a series of that nature. (CL3.136)

This was, like “The Frost-King’s Daughter,” another story that had been rejected by Farnsworth Wright when Howard had submitted it to Weird Tales. When Crawford’s magazine did appear, the name had changed to Marvel Tales, and Howard’s story appeared in the second issue (July 1934). Lovecraft’s assessment of the fanzine was frank (“ambitious size but rotten contents” AMTF 2.892), excepting Howard’s story (“I really can’t understand Wright’s rejection of that item.” AMTF 2.791) and other items. Howard’s opinion isn’t given, though he praised Emil Petaja’s poem “Witch’s Berceuse” (CL3.366, 369) and looked forward to Lovecraft’s “Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction” (CL3.274).

The Fantasy Magazine had begun life as the Science Fiction Digest in 1932, and by 1934 had changed its name and come under the editorship of Julius Schwartz, who would go on to act as an agent for H. P. Lovecraft, and later would have an influential career in comics. Schwartz arranged several round-robins, the most famous of which is “The Challenge from Beyond,” which was serialized in the magazine and included contributions by Catherine L. Moore, A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long; with Howard’s contribution appearing in the September 1935 issue. (LRS 64-65)

If Howard was otherwise a subscriber to the Fantasy Magazine prior to being approached for this endeavor, there is no evidence for it in his surviving letters, though as Fantasy Magazine advertised in The Fantasy Fan, he must at least have been aware of it, and it remains essentially his only contribution (though a portion of one of his letters was excerpted in the July 1935 issue as “A Biographical Sketch of Robert E. Howard”). “The Challenge From Beyond” stands out as Howard’s first original fiction created solely for a fanzine, as opposed to a previously rejected tale, and his only “collaboration” with Lovecraft et al. Lovecraft himself was enjoyed Howard’s section (“It amused me to see how quickly Two-Gun converted the scholarly & inoffensive George Campbell into a raging Conan or King Kull!” LRBO 163)

The final, and arguably most important, interaction between Robert E. Howard and the fan press occurred near the end of his life, when H. P. Lovecraft sent him a copy of a new fanzine:

And I got a big kick out of your sonnet in the current issue of the Phantagraph, which is the first copy of that publication I’d seen. A nice looking little magazine, and one which I hope will have a better future than many of such ventures. I believe of all the various clans of readers, the weird and scientific-fiction fans are the most loyal and active. (CL3.461)

Similar to how The All-Around Magazine and possibly even The Junto had grown out of the Lone Scout “tribe papers,” the Phantagraph had started out as The International Science Fiction Guild’s Bulletin, a fan club paper that first appeared in 1934, but was reincarnated in July-August 1935, under the editorship of Donald Wollheim (and actually printed by William Crawford of Marvel Tales).

Howard and Lovecraft had apparently discussed the Phantagraph some months prior to the Texan ever seeing an issue; though those specific letters don’t survive, we have a letter dated 9 July 1935 from Lovecraft to Wollheim suggesting he solicit Howard for material, and providing the Lock Box 313 address (LRBO 313), and Howard duly sent his contribution along to Lovecraft to forward to Wollheim:

Here is something which Two-Gun Bob says he wants forwarded to you for The Phantagraph, & which I profoundly hope you’ll be able to use. This is really great stuff—Howard has the most magnificent sense of the drama of “history” of anyone I know. He possess a panoramic vision which takes in the evolution & interaction of races & nations over vast periods of time, & gives one the same large-scale excitement which (with even vaster scope) is furnished by things like Stapledon’s “Last & First Men”. (LRBO 319, cf. LRS 69)

“The Hyborian Age” was a lengthy historical essay that served as kind of historiographic background to Howard’s stories of Conan the Cimmerian, starting in dim prehistory and proceeding up to the roots of known history, and apparently never intended for publication. Wollheim began to serialize the essay in the Phantagraph, publishing the first three parts of the essay in February, August, and October 1936—the latter two published after Howard’s suicide in July of that year—but left it incomplete after only three installments.

The critical importance of Howard’s work in the fan press is less the fiction he produced, than the simple interaction with the burgeoning fandom. As a professional writer during this period, Howard was growing more prolific and profitable, writing less weird fiction but splashing western, spicy, and other markets with some regularity, and most of his efforts went to paying markets, usually through his agent Otis Adelbert Kline. Yet part of the enduring popularity of Robert E. Howard is due in no small part to his legion of fans, and the Texan’s contribution to the fanzines and interaction with the burgeoning fandom left a legacy that was felt after his death.

Charles D. Hornig

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 4) - Dec 1933 - letter (CL3.142, cf.139-140)

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 5) - Jan 1934 - letter (CL3.145)

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 7) - Mar 1934 - “Gods of the North”

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 9) - May 1934 - letter (CL3.149)

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 2, no. 1) - Sep 1934 - “The Voices Waken Memory”

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 2, no. 5) - Jan 1935 - “Babel”

William L. Crawford

  Marvel Tales (vol. 1, no. 2) - Jul 1934 - “The Garden of Fear”

Conrad H. Rupert

  Fantasy Magazine (vol. 5, no. 2) - July 1935 - “A Biographical Sketch of Robert E. Howard” (based on a letter from Robert E. Howard, cf. CL3.287-288)

  Fantasy Magazine (vol. 5, no. 4) - Sep 1935 - “The Challenge From Beyond”

Shepherd & Wollheim

  The Phantagraph (vol. 4, no. 3) - Feb 1936 - “The Hyborian Age” (part 1)

  The Phantagraph (vol. 4, no. 5) - Aug 1936 - “The Hyborian Age” (part 2)

  The Phantagraph (vol. 5, no. 1) - Oct 1936 - “The Hyborian Age” (part 3)

______________________________

Works Cited

AMTF  A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2 vols., Hippocampus Press, 2009)

BT       Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard (REH Foundation, 2013)

CL       Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index & Addenda, REH Foundation, 2007 – 2015)

CLIH    Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard (REH Foundation, 2011)

HAJ     The History of Amateur Journalism (The Fossils, 1957)

LC       The Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard (Berkley Windhover, 1976)

LRBO  Letters to Robert Bloch and Others (Hippocampus Press, 2015)

LRS     Letters to Richard F. Searight (Necronomicon Press, 1992)

LS        “Robert E. Howard and the Lone Scouts” by Rob Roehm, in The Dark Man (vol. 7, no. 1; 2012)

LSL      Lone Scout of Letters (Roehm’s Room Press, 2011)

PWM   Robert E. Howard: The Power of the Writing Mind (Mythos Books, 2003)

SFTP   So Far the Poet & Other Writings (REH Foundation, 2010)

THA     The Hyborian Age Facsimile Editions (Skelos Press, 2015)

TJ        “The Junto: Being a Brief Look at the Amateur Press Association Robert E. Howard Partook In as a Youth” by Glenn Lord, in Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (Hippocampus Press, 2006)

UL       Uncollected Letters (Necronomicon Press, 1986)

WGP   Robert E. Howard: World’s Greatest Pulpster (Dennis McHaney, 2005)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Pictorial Preview of Trips to Robert E. Howard Days: From 2012 to 2015

If you have not already registered for this year's Robert E. Howard Days (for the banquet, picnic, food, drinks, etc.) don't put it off any longer. If you've decided not to go to the banquet, or picnic, all the other events (panels and chatting at the pavilion, seeing the Robert E. Howard House and Museum) are free, but you might want to go ahead and reserve your hotel room if you plan to stay a few days.

This will be my fifth year at REH Days. Every year I've been I've taken a ton of photographs. So, below are a few selected photos that I've taken of the event from 2012 to 2015. Enjoy!

Rusty Burke on the bus tour in 2012









Rusty Burke and Charles Hoffmann (panel) 2012

Al Harron (left) Paul Sammon (middle) & Mark Finn (right) on a panel in 2012

The Hemphill Boarding house where Novalyne Price (Ellis) lived in Cross Plains when she was a teacher at the local public school.

Jeffrey Shanks (left) Charles Hoffmann (center & Guest of Honor) & Mark Finn (right) on a panel in 2012

Paul Sammon in 2012 doing a panel about his work in Hollywood and his book titled Conan: The Phenomenon.

Bill "Indy" Cavalier & Rusty Burke presenting awards at the banquet/auction in 2012.

Fun at the pavilion, 2012

Robert E. Howard and the Amateur Press (Part 3) by Bobby Derie

3: The Junto

I feel that it gave Bob a specialized, intimate, if small, sort of audience that he need. Most of its readers were rebellious young intellectuals in that epoch of the depression. Bob’s fire and spirit symbolized all sorts of protests—expressed and inchoate—that we felt, though only in a very limited sense was he any kind of political rebel nor at all any sort of slogan shouter or cliche monger. (BT 177)

After graduating from Howard Payne, Robert E. Howard was drawn into a new amateur press association created by his friends Harold Preece and Booth Mooney, both ex-Lone Scouts, which they had cooked up after a meeting in San Antonio. They called the venture The Junto, after Benjamin Franklin’s paper; contributors would send their material to the editor (initially Mooney), who would prepare a single typewritten copy that would be circulated to each the first member on the mailing list, who would add their comments and send it to the next, and so on. Contributors included Harold Preece and his sisters Lenore, Katherine, and Louise; Booth Mooney and his brother Orus; Robert E. Howard and his cousin Maxine Ervin; Tevis Clyde Smith, Truett Vinson, Herbert Klatt, and others. (BT 129, TJ 22) Given the circulation system, the fact that so few “issues” of the Junto survive should not be surprising.

The Junto Vol. 1 No. 7
Image supplied by Howardworks.com

The contents of the Junto included poems, fiction, essays, sketches, and rants—the typical bread-and-butter for any APA—with subjects including women, politics, and religion, all of, which served as fodder for Howard’s growing correspondence with various members of the Junto gang. Howard recruited Smith (“I’m going to give your name to Booth Mooney as a possible subscriber to The Junto; a pretty good paper for that type.” CL1.190; see also “A Pretty Good Paper” - The Junto, Part 1), was glad to see things by his friends in an issue (CL1.219, 231), and was disappointed when they didn’t (CL1.197, 231, 247-248). It also proved an occasional source of argument.

One of the early controversies involved “One of the Hell Bent Speaks” signed by “A Modern Youth” (A.M.Y.), in the October 1928 issue (vol. 1, no. 7). This fostered a great response from the Juntites, with Howard himself stirring the pot (CL1.231, 239-40, 244, 253; Rob Roehm goes into greater detail of the affair in “A Pretty Good Paper” - The Junto, Part 2 and Part 3). In one issue, the Junto gang had decided to have some fun writing each other’s biographies, but Bob wrote to Clyde Smith begging off:

I have forgotten whether you or Truett were to write my biography but at any rate I’ve decided I don’t care to have mine appear in the Junto. There are several reasons, the main one being that as several of my cousins receive it, my mother would be pretty near bound to hear about it and there are a good many things in my life that I don’t want her to know about. Another thing, I don’t care to have my inner self bared before the readers of the Junto because I have decided that some of them are crumbs. Understand, you have my permission to write anything you want about me in a novel, biography or anything that comes under the title of professional art, and that you will get money for, but I don’t wish to drop my mask before the Junto readers as I have dropped it before you and Truett. (CL3.487)

This was probably in reference to Mooney’s call for autobiographies from the Juntites. (see “A Pretty Good Paper” - Part 3 and Part 4). Lesser arguments concerned a “pornographic” turn—apparently James S. Strachan included a study of a “naked negress” (CL1.355, Part 5).  The Junto continued under Mooney’s editorship from April 1928 to spring 1929, when he no longer had time for it, and the position was picked up by Lenore Preece. (TJ 22-23, Part 6)

The first issue under Preece’s editorship was to have been the June 1929 number (vol. 2, no. 1), but a new Juntite lost the issue (and was quickly expelled), so the first proper issue of her run was July 1929. (TJ 23) This issue included Harold Preece’s article “Women: A Diatribe,” about how there was no such thing as intellectual women; it was designed to get a rise out of Bob Howard—Bob and Harold had been arguing about the same subject in his letters (CL1.287-292)—and apparently worked. (BT 176-177, Part 7)

By spring 1930, reports of the Junto were fewer in Howard’s letters (CL2.17, 30), and apparently feedback from the Juntites was poor, so Preece decided to discontinue the paper. (TJ 23-24) For the nature of its composition and the period in which it was published, the Junto had provided a valuable resource for Howard, not so much in refining his prose or poetry, or even as a creative outlet, but simply for the connection with a wider group of writers, even amateurs, which provided him much-needed encouragement, criticism, and companionship.

The final echo of the Junto saga was a proposal by Juntite Alvin P. Bradford to self-publish a small collection of their poetry, under the proposed title Virgin Towers. (TJ 24, CL2.195) Howard sent Bradford copies of his poems, but ultimately nothing came of the endeavor. (CL2.198) In 1932, Lenore Preece, Clyde Smith, and Robert E. Howard approached Christopher House to publish a collection of poems to be titled Out of the Sky, but asked for the return of the manuscript. (SFTP xxvi, CL2.245)

As the business with The Junto wound down, however, Howard began to correspond with someone who would bring him into touch with the burgeoning fan press for science fiction and fantasy: H. P. Lovecraft. In an early letter to Lovecraft, who had responded positively to one of Howard’s poems, Bob modestly replied:

I am glad you liked “Reuben’s Brethren”. It has never been published save in a small privately circulated paper. (CL2.126)

The original publication for “Reuben’s Brethren” was The Junto as “The Skull in the Clouds.”

The Junto (not counting comments by Robert E. Howard):

  The Junto (vol. 1, no. 6) - Sep 1928 - “Age”, “Surrender--Your Money or Your Vice”, “Them”

  The Junto (vol. 1, no. 7) - Oct 1928 - “A Hairy Chested Idealist Sings”, “More Evidence on the Innate Divinity of Man”

  The Junto (vol. 1, no. 8) - Nov 1928 - “To A Man Whose Name I Never Knew”, “Swings and Swings”

  The Junto (vol. 1, no. 9) - Dec 1928 - “A Song For Men That Laugh”, “To the Evangelists”, “The Galveston Affair”

  The Junto (vol. 1, no. 10) - Jan 1929 - “Ambition in the Moonlight”

  The Junto (vol. 2, no. 2) - Jul 1929 - “Hate’s Den”, “The King and the Mallet”, “Singing in the Wind”

  The Junto (vol. 2, no. 3) - Aug 1929 - “Heritage”, “Surrender”

  The Junto (vol. 2, no. 4) - Sep 1929 - “Nectar”, “Etched in Ebony”, “Midnight”, “Sentiment”, “Musings”

  The Junto (vol. 2, no. 8) - Jan 1930 - “The Skull in the Clouds”

  The Junto (vol. 2, no. 9) - Feb 1930 - "Feach Air Muir Lionadhi Gealach Buidhe Mar Or"

_______________________

Works Cited

AMTF  A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2 vols., Hippocampus Press, 2009)

BT       Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard (REH Foundation, 2013)

CL       Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index & Addenda, REH Foundation, 2007 – 2015)

CLIH    Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard (REH Foundation, 2011)

HAJ     The History of Amateur Journalism (The Fossils, 1957)

LC       The Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard (Berkley Windhover, 1976)

LRBO  Letters to Robert Bloch and Others (Hippocampus Press, 2015)

LRS     Letters to Richard F. Searight (Necronomicon Press, 1992)

LS        “Robert E. Howard and the Lone Scouts” by Rob Roehm, in The Dark Man (vol. 7, no. 1; 2012)

LSL      Lone Scout of Letters (Roehm’s Room Press, 2011)

PWM   Robert E. Howard: The Power of the Writing Mind (Mythos Books, 2003)

SFTP   So Far the Poet & Other Writings (REH Foundation, 2010)

THA     The Hyborian Age Facsimile Editions (Skelos Press, 2015)

TJ        “The Junto: Being a Brief Look at the Amateur Press Association Robert E. Howard Partook In as a Youth” by Glenn Lord, in Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (Hippocampus Press, 2006)

UL       Uncollected Letters (Necronomicon Press, 1986)

WGP   Robert E. Howard: World’s Greatest Pulpster (Dennis McHaney, 2005)

Part 1, Part 2

Robert E. Howard and the Amateur Press (Part 2) by Bobby Derie

2: Amateur Journalism: The All-Around Magazine, The Toreador, The Bard, The Golden Caliph, and The Right-Hook

Bob Howard’s Right Hook is interesting. I wonder whether he will continue to put it out. Snappy material. (LSL 31)

All Around Magazine circa 1916

Amateur journalism during the period of Robert E. Howard’s life was a highly organized affair, with national-level organizations in the form of the National Amateur Press Association and the United Amateur Press Association (which, ironically, had undergone a split), both of which had their official organs, conventions, dedicated departments, elected officials, and annual dues. H. P. Lovecraft had been deeply involved in these amateur journalism organizations since 1914, but there are few references to these affairs in their surviving letters, nor any apparent attempt by Lovecraft to recruit Howard. (cf. AMTF 1.463)

However, in 1935 Lovecraft’s correspondent Natalie H. Wooley quoted from Howard’s serial “Beyond the Black River” in her essay “The Adventure Story,” which ran in the amateur magazine The Californian (Fall 1935) run by another of Lovecraft’s amateur friends, Hyman Bradofsky of the NAPA, who sent Howard a copy of the issue. Howard replied with a courteous letter of thanks, which was published by Bradofsky in the Summer 1936 issue of The Californian—which was the beginning and end of Howard’s association with organized amateur journalism at the national level. (CL3.463)

Organized amateur press organizations in Texas at the state or regional level seemed to be somewhat lacking during Howard’s lifetime; the Southern Amateur Press Organization and its descendants had been defunct since 1912, and there is little record of the Texas Amateur Press Association, though it was noted that several amateur publications were being produced in the Lone Star state. (HAJ 86, 200-201) It was in such smaller, disorganized, local publications produced by a teen aged Robert E. Howard and his friends where he found expression for more of his work beyond the school papers in Brownwood and Cross Plains.

Clyde Smith owned a small Kelsey Printing Press (SFTP 3, 217), and produced an amateur newspaper based on the “tribe paper” of the Lone Scouts, a scouting organization for those unable to attend regular group scouting activities; many of Howard’s friends were Lone Scouts. The All-Around Magazine. (BT 90) In 1923, the highschoolers Smith and Howard collaborated on the beginning of a serial titled “Under the Great Tiger,” which caused Howard to comment: “I got your paper and it’s really good. Hurray for the ‘Great Tiger’!” (CL1.6) However, Smith soon ceased publication, and the serial went unfinished. Howard submitted a poem to another “tribe paper”, Christopher O. “Ottie” Gill’s The Bard, but Gill ceased publication before anything came of it. (CL1.80, cf. LS 50)

Lone Scout, Herbert Klatt

Robert E. Howard then tried his own hand at an amateur journal, producing the sole issue of The Golden Caliph in 1923, a 4-page effort typed by hand and unbound, containing poetry, smatterings of fiction, and an essay on the sword reminiscent of Howard’s letters to Smith. (LC 376-380). A substantially similar effort were the three issues of The Right Hook, typed by Howard in 1925 and probably distributed to his friends (and, after the first issue, contributors) Herbert Klatt, Truett Vinson, and Clyde Smith, though eight pages in length, and devoted mostly to boxing lore or discussion, poetry, women, and sundry matters. (PWM 59) These publications are both notable primarily for how relaxed they are, being essentially private letters to a handful of like-minded friends, and aside from fiction and poetry contain some of a young Robert E. Howard’s most unguarded thoughts on race ever put to paper.

Also in 1925, Robert E. Howard contributed to an amateur periodical published by his friend Truett Vinson, The Toreador. Only two of these numbers are known to exist, though they were first published around 1923, when Howard subscribed to the paper, and later restarted in 1925. (CL1.23, LS 56) The impetus for its revival might have come from Herbert Klatt, who wrote to Clyde Smith in 1925:

And then what about jointly publishing an official organ? By each contributing $2.00 per month we could make The Toreador an interesting little six or eight page paper. Truett could manage it, mail the subscription copies and divide the rest among us to keep or mail as samples. We could make it our very own channel of expression. (LSL 26)

First Lone Scout booklet
Circa Oct. 30, 1915

The general outline of The Toreador seems very similar to The Right Hook, and it seems likely that Howard took his cues from Vinson in laying out his own amateur paper; Rob Roehm suggests all of these amateur publications took their cues from the “tribe papers” of the Lone Scouts. (LS 48-50) For Howard, at least, the amateur works were a part of his amateur writings alongside the school papers, only free of any concern for censorship or editorializing. Of the whole affair of little amateur papers, Howard would later write:

Damned childish, I think. Reminds me of the days of yore when we used to put out amateur papers — The Toreador and such like. Truett put out that and it was the only decent one of the gang. (CL1.229)

Tevis Clyde Smith:

 The All-Around Magazine (vol. 1, no. 3-4) - May 1923 - “Under the Great Tiger” (part 1, with Tevis Clyde Smith)

 The All-Around Magazine (vol. 1, no. 5) - July 1923 - “Under the Great Tiger” (part 1, with Tevis Clyde Smith)

Robert E. Howard:

 The Golden Caliph (vol. 1, no. 1) - Aug 1923

 The Right Hook (vol. 1, no. 1) - Mar 1925

 The Right Hook (vol. 1, no. 2) - Apr 1925

 The Right Hook (vol. 1, no. 3) - Jun 1925

Truett Vinson:

  The Toreador - Jun 1925 - “Le Gentil Homme le Diable”

  The Toreador - Jul 1925 - “The Sword of Mahommed”, “Girls”

________________________

Works Cited

AMTF  A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2 vols., Hippocampus Press, 2009)

BT       Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard (REH Foundation, 2013)

CL       Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index & Addenda, REH Foundation, 2007 – 2015)

CLIH    Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard (REH Foundation, 2011)

HAJ     The History of Amateur Journalism (The Fossils, 1957)

LC       The Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard (Berkley Windhover, 1976)

LRBO  Letters to Robert Bloch and Others (Hippocampus Press, 2015)

LRS     Letters to Richard F. Searight (Necronomicon Press, 1992)

LS        “Robert E. Howard and the Lone Scouts” by Rob Roehm, in The Dark Man (vol. 7, no. 1; 2012)

LSL      Lone Scout of Letters (Roehm’s Room Press, 2011)

PWM   Robert E. Howard: The Power of the Writing Mind (Mythos Books, 2003)

SFTP   So Far the Poet & Other Writings (REH Foundation, 2010)

THA     The Hyborian Age Facsimile Editions (Skelos Press, 2015)

TJ        “The Junto: Being a Brief Look at the Amateur Press Association Robert E. Howard Partook In as a Youth” by Glenn Lord, in Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (Hippocampus Press, 2006)

UL       Uncollected Letters (Necronomicon Press, 1986)

WGP   Robert E. Howard: World’s Greatest Pulpster (Dennis McHaney, 2005)

Part 1

Robert E. Howard and the Amateur Press (Part 1) by Bobby Derie

I am neither a novice nor an amateur at the writing game; I have been a regular contributor to Weird Tales Magazine, for some five or six years. My stories have also appeared in Ghost Story Magazine, a Macfadden Publication, Fight Stories and Argosy.

— Robert E. Howard to Thrills of the Jungle Magazine, 1929, CL1.361

Weird Tales July 1925

Robert E. Howard made his first professional sale in 1924, when he sold “Spear and Fang” and “In the Forest of Villefere” to Weird Tales, and for much of his adult life Howard was determined to earn his living as a professional writer. Before he began selling his fiction, however, and continuing on through much of his life Howard was also involved in the amateur press, from school newspapers to the small magazines of the burgeoning science fiction and fantasy fan movement. This involvement in the amateur press, while not lucrative, helped establish and foster some of the most important personal relationships of Robert E. Howard’s life, and the fiction and poetry he saw published in these amateur publications are as important to his body of work as anything published in paying magazines.

1: School Papers: The Tattler, The Progress, The Yellow Jacket and The Collegian

Have you been reading Robert Howard’s short stories in The Tattler for several issues back? If you haven’t you are missing a treat. His Christmas story received commendation from the edition of the Brownwood Bulletin and his later stories are just as good.
            We are fortunate in having such a good writer here in our school and hope he will keep up his contributions. The stories are mostly written in the style of O’Henry, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain, and are just as interesting as their stories. His stories have plenty of action and are spicy with near-cuss words and slang. If for nothing else The Tattler is worth a dime and over if it has a story by Robert Howard.
— The Tattler, March 15th 1923 (BT 85)

Tevis Clyde Smith

In 1922 at the age of sixteen, Robert E. Howard transferred to Brownwood High School, where he made the acquaintance of Truett Vinson and Tevis Clyde Smith, and the three of them would go on to become lifelong friends and correspondents. Howard became involved with the school paper, The Tattler. Howard graduated high school in May 1923, having published seven short stories and poems in The Tattler; two more would appear in the Jan 1925 issue—Smith, who was two years younger than Howard, had continued on at Brownwood High and contributed stories to and became editor of the school paper, and Howard continued to show an interest in the paper and his friend’s work. (CL1.24, 25, 41)

After graduating, Howard worked at a number of different jobs, while submitting to (and receiving rejections from) paying magazines; during this period he also landed a poem with the Cross Plains High School paper, The Progress in 1924. In June of that year, Howard took a stenographer’s course at the Howard Payne College in Brownwood (BT 106), and began writing material for the school paper, The Yellow Jacket, which was edited by a friend of Howard, C. S. Boyles. (CL1.22) Howard continued to submit material for the paper, with a dozen stories, plays, and poems published in those pages between 1924 and 1927 (“Private Magrath of the A.E.F.” was also reprinted in the November 1934 issue).

In 1925, Tevis Clyde Smith graduated Brownwood High School and enrolled at Daniel Baker College in Brownwood, where he was elected as editor of the school paper, the Daniel Baker Collegian for the 1925-1926 school year. (BT 118, LSL 32n13, cf. CL1.94) In 1926, five of Robert E. Howard’s poems were published in the Collegian, and in 1927, Howard finished his courses at Howard Payne, and returned to Cross Plains, largely ending his association with the school papers.

The Yellow Jacket from 1927

Howard’s scholastic journalism efforts from 1922 to 1927 were limited, the stories decidedly amateurish, with the Yellow Jacket tales more closely resembling the slang-laden, jocular pastiches that peppered his letters to Clyde Smith and others than anything he submitted to a paying magazine. Ridiculous pastiches like “The Fastidious Fooey Mancucu” (CL1.139-142) by Howard are exactly the same sort of effort as Smith’s “Twenty Years of Sticking Plaster” from The Tattler (SFTP 20-23), lampooning the same authors and hackneyed writing tropes. These raw efforts, however, were steps in the path to more refined efforts that would come as Howard pursued professional success.

Brownwood High School

 The Tattler (vol. 3, no. 7) - December 1922 - “West is West”, “Golden Hope Christmas”

 The Tattler (vol. 3, no. 10) - Feb 1923 - “Aha! Or the Mystery of the Queen’s Necklace”

 The Tattler (vol. 3, no. 11) - Mar 1923 - “Unhand Me, Villain!”

 The Tattler (vol. 3, no. 12) - Mar 1923 - “The Sheik”

 The Tattler (vol. 5, no. 7) - Jan 1925 - “The Ideal Girl”, “The Kissing of Sal Snooboo”

Cross Plains High School

  The Progress (vol. 1, no. 2) - Feb 1924 - “The Maiden of Kercheezer”, “Rules of Etiquette”

Howard Payne College

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. X, no. 13) - Mar 1924 - “Letter of a Chinese Student” (1)

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. X, no. 17) - May 1924 - “Letter of a Chinese Student” (2)

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XI, no. 4) - Sep 1924 - “Halt! Who Goes There?”

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XIII, no. 7) - Oct 1926 - “After the Game”, “Sleeping Beauty”

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XIII, no. 8) - Nov 1926 - “Weekly Short Story”

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XIII, no. 10) - Nov 1926 - “For the Honor of the School”

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XIII, no. 15) - Jan 1927 - “His War Medals”, “The Rivals”

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XIII, no. 16) - Jan 1927 - “The Thessalians”, “Private Magrath of the A.E.F”

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XIII, no. 17) - Jan 1927 - “Ye College Days”

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XIII, no. 20) - Feb 1927 - “Cupid vs. Pollux”

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XIII, no. 25) - Mar 1927 - “From Tea to Tee”

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XIII, no. 29) - Apr 1927 - “The Reformation: A Dream”

  The Yellow Jacket (vol. XXI, no. 8) - Nov 1934 - “Private Magrath of the A.E.F.” (reprint)

Daniel Baker College

  The Daniel Baker Collegian (vol. 21, no. 10) - Mar 1926 - “Illusion”, “Fables for Little Folks”

  The Daniel Baker Collegian (vol. 21, no. 11) - Apr 1926 - “Roundelay of the Roughneck”

  The Daniel Baker Collegian (vol. 21, no. 12) - May 1926 - “Futility”, “Tarantella”
__________________________

Works Cited

AMTF  A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2 vols., Hippocampus Press, 2009)

BT       Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard (REH Foundation, 2013)

CL       Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index & Addenda, REH Foundation, 2007 – 2015)

CLIH    Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard (REH Foundation, 2011)

HAJ     The History of Amateur Journalism (The Fossils, 1957)

LC       The Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard (Berkley Windhover, 1976)

LRBO  Letters to Robert Bloch and Others (Hippocampus Press, 2015)

LRS     Letters to Richard F. Searight (Necronomicon Press, 1992)

LS        “Robert E. Howard and the Lone Scouts” by Rob Roehm, in The Dark Man (vol. 7, no. 1; 2012)

LSL      Lone Scout of Letters (Roehm’s Room Press, 2011)

PWM   Robert E. Howard: The Power of the Writing Mind (Mythos Books, 2003)

SFTP   So Far the Poet & Other Writings (REH Foundation, 2010)

THA     The Hyborian Age Facsimile Editions (Skelos Press, 2015)

TJ        “The Junto: Being a Brief Look at the Amateur Press Association Robert E. Howard Partook In as a Youth” by Glenn Lord, in Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (Hippocampus Press, 2006)

UL       Uncollected Letters (Necronomicon Press, 1986)

WGP   Robert E. Howard: World’s Greatest Pulpster (Dennis McHaney, 2005)