Untrodden Fields: Robert E. Howard’s Sex Library; Part 3 by Bobby Derie

Intro From Part One:

[Some considerable work has been done by Howard scholars Dr. Charlotte Laughlin, Glenn Lord, L. Sprague de Camp, Steve Eng, and Rusty Burke to identify the books that comprised Robert E. Howard’s personal library, based primarily on the holograph list of books that Dr. I. M. Howard donated to form the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection after his son’s death, as well as Robert E. Howard’s surviving letters and papers. Among these books are a number of works of erotica or curiosa which, while not pornographic to contemporary tastes, were nevertheless concerned with some aspect of sexuality (usually from a scholarly or pseudo-scholarly perspective) and were often treated as such. It is interesting to see, based on these books, what light if any they can shed on Howard’s life and work.]

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The Merry Order of St. Bridget (1868) by Margaret Anson (James Glass Bertram) is a flagellation novel by the author of A History of the Rod, with most of the whipping occurring between women. The Misfortunes of Colette (1930), published for subscribers only, may have been a Gargoyle Press title; a translation of a 1914 French erotic novel about a couple that works to keep Colette in servitude via various tortures. Closely related is Presented in Leather: A Cheerful End to a Tearful Diary (1931) by Claire Willows, where a girl named Flora is imprisoned and tortured by her aunt, waiting for rescue. It is not impossible that one of these works helped inspire Howard’s idea of “lesbianism” being expressed in such a violent fashion.

Painful Pleasures (1931) is an anthology of flagellation anecdotes culled from French sources, translated by W. J. Meusal and published by Gargoyle Press, which specialized in flagellation literature, advertised in the pulp magazines, and sold by mail. (Gertzman 76) Another Gargoyle Press title on Howard’s list is The Strap Returns: New Notes on Flagellation (1933) by Anonymous (Samuel Julian Wegman and Sydney Frank), which consists of a number of accounts of corporal punishment ostensibly taken from American and European newspapers.

Nell in Bridewell: The System of Corporal Punishment in the Female Prisons of South Germany Up to the Year 1848, A Contribution to the History of Manners (Burke notes the 1900 first edition, but the 1934 reprint seems more likely) by Wilhelm Reinhard is another quasi-historical work of corporal punishment, translated from the German.

Tracts of Flagellation (1930) is a privately printed collection of flagellation works reputedly taken from the library of English antiquarian Henry Thomas Buckle (hence Howard’s note): 1. Sublime of Flagellation; 2. A Treatise of the Use of Flogging in Venereal Affairs; 3. Madame Birchini's Dance; 4. Fashionable Lectures; 5. Lady Bumtickler's Revels; 6. Exhibition of Female Flagellants in the Modest and Incontinent World; 7. Part the Second of the Exhibition of Female Flagellants. The assertion “by George Colman” may be due to some editions of Tracts including the epic erotic poem The Rodiad (1871), which was falsely attributed to George Colman the Younger in, among other places, Curiosa of Flagellants. Howard’s entry for The Rodiad directly below Tracts likely suggests he was either unaware of this, or else the catalogue or advertisement he was referring to did not make it plain.

Untrodden Fields: Robert E. Howard’s Sex Library; Part 2 by Bobby Derie

Intro From Part One:

[Some considerable work has been done by Howard scholars Dr. Charlotte Laughlin, Glenn Lord, L. Sprague de Camp, Steve Eng, and Rusty Burke to identify the books that comprised Robert E. Howard’s personal library, based primarily on the holograph list of books that Dr. I. M. Howard donated to form the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection after his son’s death, as well as Robert E. Howard’s surviving letters and papers. Among these books are a number of works of erotica or curiosa which, while not pornographic to contemporary tastes, were nevertheless concerned with some aspect of sexuality (usually from a scholarly or pseudo-scholarly perspective) and were often treated as such. It is interesting to see, based on these books, what light if any they can shed on Howard’s life and work.]

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Otto A. Wall

Sex and Sex Worship (Phallic Worship) (1919) by Otto A. Wall is demonstrative of the difficulty in assigning a specific source to certain of Howard’s beliefs; a substantial tome of over 600 pages and more than 300 black-and-white illustrations, nominally “A Scientific Treatise on Sex, its Nature and Function, and its Influence on Art, Science, Architecture, and Religion—with Special Reference to Sex Worship and Symbolism” it would perhaps more honestly be described as a pseudo-Victorian, quasi-academic hodgepodge of all matters related to sex and religion that the author could dig up, with as many pictures of nude woman in ancient art, medical textbook drawings, or anthropological photographs as Wall could squeeze in, covering everything from ancient mythology to Ernst Haeckel. Much of the material, if Howard ever read the whole thing, he never mentioned in his fiction or surviving letters (it would be interesting to see what he made of  the anecdote of “Conon and his daughter” on page 520), and nothing that he did mention is specific enough to trace back to this source. For example, in letter to H. P. Lovecraft from October 1930, Howard wrote:

For my part, I am too little versed in antiquities to even offer an opinion, but I am inclined to think that these figures represent a pre-Christian age and have some phallic significance. I am especially inclined to this view by the consistent use of triangles in the stone figure. Phallic worship was very common in Ireland, as you know—the legend of Saint Patrick and the snakes being symbolical of the driving out of the cult—and in almost every locality where phallic worship thrived, small images representing the cult have been found, in such widely scattered places as Africa, India and Mexico. Though of course the workmanship of the images differs with the locality and I have never seen or heard of, figures just like these of yours. At any rate, they are fascinating and open up enormous fields of dramatic conjecture. I am sure you could build some magnificent tales out of them. (CL2.95)

Sex and Sex Worship contains sections on both phallic worship and serpent worship, but it is hard to say if this is Howard’s source—or at least his sole source—for his particular datum, since by 1930 the concept of phallic worship had become relatively widespread since being introduced by Hodder Westropp in his 1870 paper “Phallic Worship”; the best that can be said is this is the most likely source, given that the work was available before Howard made this statement and it was in his library at his death. At the same time, however, it feels insufficient to try to account for some of Howard’s statements in his letters to the sex books known to be in his library. For example, Howard writes in a letter to Harold Preece dated 5 September 1928:

Today at town I saw the hang-over of some old and lascivious custom—a girl had a birthday and her girl and boy friends pounced upon her and indulged in a spanking debauch. I have never been able to find just how that custom originated, but have an idea its roots lie in the old superstition that spanking a woman or whipping her with a switch makes her bear children oftener and easier. (CL1.225)

The basic anecdote of a tradition of whipping or spanking a woman on some particular day to ensure fertility and ease childbirth is found in Sex and Sex Worship, A History of the Rod, and History of Flagellation, often but not exclusively when discussing the Roman festival of Lupercalia. The concept of a “hang-over of some old and lascivious custom,” however, speaks more of the influence of Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890). (Burke)

Untrodden Fields: Robert E. Howard’s Sex Library, Part 1 by Bobby Derie

Some considerable work has been done by Howard scholars Dr. Charlotte Laughlin, Glenn Lord, L. Sprague de Camp, Steve Eng, and Rusty Burke to identify the books that comprised Robert E. Howard’s personal library, based primarily on the holograph list of books that Dr. I. M. Howard donated to form the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection after his son’s death, as well as Robert E. Howard’s surviving letters and papers. Among these books are a number of works of erotica or curiosa which, while not pornographic to contemporary tastes, were nevertheless concerned with some aspect of sexuality (usually from a scholarly or pseudo-scholarly perspective) and were often treated as such. It is interesting to see, based on these books, what light if any they can shed on Howard’s life and work.

William J. Robinson

Birth Control, or, The Limitation of Offspring by the Prevention of Conception by William J. Robinson was originally published as Fewer and Better Babies in 1915 by Robinson’s Critic and Guide company, later reprinted in many editions. Dr. Robinson was the author of numerous sexological tracts, serious and devoid of commercialized smut, aimed at educating the public about contraceptive devices. (Gertzman 186) The bulk of this book deals more with the moral and philosophical questions of birth control than the practical matters of condoms, diaphragms, and spermicides, which were actually eliminated by censors (and otherwise technically illegal under Comstock laws). For Howard, his interest in the subject may or may not have been due to speculative encounters with prostitutes; given the period it is not surprising that the subject does not come up in his published fiction. The only mention of abortion I have yet found in his writings is a reference in his play “Song of Bastards” in a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (CL1.344). The subject seems to have formed at least an occasional subject of conversation with Howard’s intimate friends, as in the copy of The Leather Pushers that Truett Vinson gifted to Robert E. Howard, Vinson inscribed to his friend:

Also don’t
forget our opinions on
other subjects ranging
from prize-fighting to
birth control!
(Burke)