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 |
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)
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)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNice work, as usual, though this bit about the Yellow Jacket is a bit off: “This personal relationship with the editor might explain why Howard continued to submit material for it long after he’d dropped out of college . . .”
ReplyDeleteHoward had two stories published in the Yellow Jacket in March and May 1924 before he was a student there—-both with the same title: “Letter of a Chinese Student.” He enrolled in the fall and had “Halt! Who Goes There?” out in September. He then dropped out of school. But he was back at Howard Payne in the fall of 1926 when his next story appeared, and he remained a student there until he graduated from the commercial school in 1927.
And Editor C. S. Boyles, Jr. was long gone by then.
There's more information than anyone would want about Howard and the Yellow Jacket here: http://www.rehtwogunraconteur.com/yellow-jacket/
Ach, thanks for clearing that up Rob. See if maybe I can't have Todd edit that out...
ReplyDeleteNo worries. We might be the only people who even care about such minor details. And, for those who might become interested, all of the stories and poems mentioned here were collected in the REHF's School Days in the Post Oaks. (Shameless plug #1.)
ReplyDeleteI would highly recommend School Days in the Post Oaks. Here is a link to purchase it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rehfoundation.org/2011/06/14/now-available/