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 |
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 |
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 |
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)
No comments:
Post a Comment