The Washington Post Mentions Renegades and Rogues

 Michael Dirda, acclaimed book reviewer and critic for the Washington Post recently wrote an article about Robert E. Howard. The title of Dirda's article is Robert E. Howard became famous for creating Conan. But that warrior was only the beginning.  

Dirda writes: 

As a reviewer, I’ve always regarded myself as a generalist, lurching from a novel this week to a biography or work of history the next, occasionally interspersing an essay or rediscovering a neglected classic. But every so often, I feel the need to be much more — what’s the right word? — serious, intense, almost scholarly. I yearn to immerse myself in the works of a single author, to spend time reading as much of his or her writing as possible. During these literary sprees, I even undertake actual research, scribble notes, talk to experts.

Last month, I realized that this column would coincide with Robert E. Howard Remembrance Days in Cross Plains, Tex. There, the writer’s fans gather each June 11 — the day the 30-year-old shot himself in 1936 — for talks, barbecue and camaraderie. This year’s guest of honor is Roy Thomas, who wrote the 1970s Marvel comics which — along with Lancer paperbacks featuring brutal and sensual cover art by Frank Frazetta — created a new audience for Howard’s best-known character, the greatest warrior of the ancient Hyborian age.
[. . . ]
_________________

You can continue reading the article at the link I provided above. It's nice to see Robert E. Howard getting national attention.

The Literary Influences of Robert E. Howard: Pirates and Buccaneers by Todd B. Vick

Pirates and Buccaneers, their exploits, adventures, and duels, make a strong mark on many of Robert E. Howard’s stories. The sources for these inspirations are somewhat broad. There are nonfiction books about pirates, their history, their adventures and deaths that Howard read early in his life. Then there is the fiction Howard read that impacted his own stories with swashbuckling duels, high adventure, treasure hunts, and the like. All these pirate histories and fictional works played a pivotal role in Howard’s creation of various characters, especially his more famous Puritan duelist, Solomon Kane, and several Kane stories. 

At an early age Howard discovered and became fascinated with pirates and buccaneers. This is evident in T. A. Burns’ essay for the 10 July 1936 issue of The Cross Plains Review where she explained that a young Howard (likely age 12 or 13 at the time) proudly introduced himself and his dog to her (during one of her frequent outings to read and enjoy the outdoors) and declared that someday he was going to write pirate stories. There are any number of resources for Howard’s interest in pirates. The most difficult to determine are the books he read prior to the age of 15. But by age 15 and beyond, Howard mentions several works that fueled his passion for pirate tales. Howard wrote a brief essay for his English Class No. 3 at Cross Plains High school dated February 7, 1922. A few weeks prior he had turned 16. In this essay, Howard mentions that when he was younger, he read a Captain Kidd biography and various fictions about the pirate. These works enamored him. Here are Howard’s exact words: “Reading his [Captain Kidd’s] biography and fiction based on his eventful life, caused me to determine at an early age, to lead a life of piracy on the high seas. Tales of Blackbeard and Morgan clinched my resolve.” [Howard, Back to School, 271] 

Sometime later, Howard set aside his puerile notion of leading a pirate’s life after reading a different book. According to this same high school essay, the author’s name and the title of this other book escaped Howard’s memory. But he explained that this author “wrote an authentic book about piracy and by some means I secured it [. . .] and devoured it with avidity but was shocked to find that it contained a harrowing account of the deaths of Kidd, Blackbeard, and other noted gentlemen.” [Ibid.] Howard described, in his typical hyperbolic fashion and vivid detail, that the book contained a gruesome image of a known pirate, shortly after his execution, with a spike driven through his head. The contents and that illustration from the book caused Howard to reconsider his vocational desire of piracy on the high seas. It did not, however, deter his passion for pirate tales. In fact, it probably fueled it. 

Howard began reading pirate tales from around the age of eight or earlier. One of the earliest works Howard experienced in the literary crafting of high adventure is Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Apropos to Howard’s interest or maybe even the cause, Stevenson’s tale is about buccaneers and buried treasure. What more could an impressionable boy desire than to be a buccaneer who uses a map to find buried treasure? Stevenson’s story ignited young imaginations around the globe. And that motif lasted for more than a century, first in fiction and later in films. Howard jumped on this creative bandwagon in multiple ways. In fact, his poem, “Flint’s Passing” is an homage to Stevenson’s story and characters, Captain Flint and Long John Silver. But what about that authentic account mentioned in Howard’s essay, that spurned his notion of living the pirate’s life? 

Illustration by Pyle

It is anyone’s guess what book Howard is referring to. I recently spent several weeks online searching for pirate books that might have matched Howard’s description, but also discovered books he may have encountered that further ignited his passion. I found several. The first is written by Howard Pyle, the popular late nineteenth century pirates and buccaneers aficionado (and illustrator), titled The Book of Pirates (1895). While perusing the contents of Pyle’s book, I realized it was not a strong contender for the book Howard mentioned in his essay. None of the images matched the one Howard mentioned (a pike through the head of a pirate). However, Pyle’s book has a chapter titled, Jack Ballister's Fortunes. The name Jack Ballinster is strikingly close to Howard's character Jack Hollinster from “The Blue Flame of Vengeance.” All things considered; Pyle’s book could be one of the biographical accounts Howard indicated he read that influenced his notion of being a pirate on the high seas. And it is possible that Pyle’s book influenced Howard’s Solomon Kane fiction, especially based on Pyle’s illustrations. 

I came across another book that I thought might be a contender: Captain William Kidd And Others of the Pirates Or Buccaneers who Ravaged the Seas, the Islands, and the Continents of America Two Hundred Years Ago by John Stevens Cabot Abbott (1876). The contents of Abbott’s book is close to what Howard described in his essay, “it contained a harrowing account of the deaths of Kidd, Blackbeard, and other noted gentlemen.” [Ibid.] Some of the illustrations where gruesome for their day, and this image was toward the back of the book but did not depict exactly what Howard described.

Illustration from Abbott's Captain William Kidd

While I was poring over pirate books, I began corresponding with Howard scholar Rusty Burke. I told Burke about my research for this article and he immediately turned a light switch on. He said he had done something similar some time ago and the best book he could find that fit Howard’s description was The Pirates Own Book: Authentic Narratives of the Most Celebrated Sea Robbers by Charles Ellms (1837). The contents matched and in the middle of the book is an image of the head of Benavides stuck on a pole (below).

Happy 115th Birthday, Robert E. Howard!

Happy birthday, Robert E. Howard!

Born January 22nd, 1906 in Peaster, Texas.

Happy 115th Birthday, Robert E. Howard

The general tradition in Howard fandom is to read a story by Howard and while doing so, imbibe your favorite beverage!

So . . . Here's to the first of all dog brothers . . . Cheers!

Renegades and Rogues: The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard by Todd B. Vick

This Tuesday (January 19) , my book, Renegades and Rogues: The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard  hits the shelves in bookshops around the world. It is the first comprehensive biography of Robert E. Howard published by a major academic press (The University of Texas Press). It is a cumulation of three years of research and writing devoted solely to the book, 18 years of scholarly research and writing (articles and blog posts), and 40 years of being a reader and fan of Howard's work. 

There are several reasons I wanted to write this biography: 

This book is something I had been planning on doing since 2002, but back then I was ill-prepared to take on the task. There was so much more research I needed to do, so much more reading, uncovering of Howard's family and life. So, I dug my heels in and pushed forward and devoted my time to the task of researching and writing a biography. 

To date there has not been a biography about Robert E. Howard from an academic press. Moreover, there is a need for a biography that benefits both fans and scholars. And when I say scholars, I mean the use of available reliable sources, with notes that students and writers can use in their own research. I thought it was also important to take advantage of the advancements of the publication of Howard's collected letters, the letters of other pulp writers about Howard, and other materials. All this was paramount to me writing Renegades and Rogues. I also felt that an objective examination of Howard's life, from birth to death, with an emphasis on the external factors that not only affected his life but his work was needed. I knew from the start I was writing about real people, with real flaws, real struggles, and issues that everyone could relate to. My research and sources had to be present to give the work the academic foundation it needed. 

Renegades and Rogues establishes a solid foundation for current and future fans and scholars providing them with an objective, unexaggerated, unromanticized examination of Robert E. Howard's life and work. It includes the vast amount of new data that has been uncovered over the last ten years presented on blogs with limited readership. I also spent months poring over interviews of the people from Cross Plains and other local areas who knew the Howards. What were they saying? How consistent were their claims and memories? I then incorporated this information in the book. These are intriguing firsthand interviews that help illustrate the larger picture about the Howard family and in particular Robert E. Howard's life.

Some of the questions I asked myself while I was researching this biography include, what events did Howard experience that caused him to write what he wrote? How did his formative years play a role in his stories? What influences did his parents have on him? What made Howard tick? What got him out of bed in the mornings? How did the publishing markets move him to write? What directions? Why did he write what he wrote? And, if he had lived, what direction was Robert E. Howard headed with his writing? All these questions and others I attempted to answer.

The first three chapters of the monograph focus on the Howards' familial history, their travels from Robert's birth up to their move to Cross Plains. I apply this information to not only Howard's personality, but to his work as well. I then discuss Howard's education, his friends and their influences on him, and how his correspondence with friends and other writers moved him and his works in various directions. I examine Howard's 12-year publishing career (with an emphasis on his historical period), the market in which Howard published and how that market directed his stories. I take a look into his relationships, especially with Novalyne Price (Ellis), but I did this from her perspective and how she explained her encounters with Robert and his parents. I examine a select amount of Howard's stories and provide cursory exposition and commentary about those stories. I also examine Howard's most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian, and the publishing career of that character in great detail. I do all this and much more.

Because the book is published through an academic press, my initial manuscript draft was read by peer readers who basically took the manuscript, examined it, broke it down, and then sent it back to me for revision and improvement. This process vastly improved the direction and content of the book. Once the initial review was corrected, it went back out to several other peers who did the same. The first two peers who examined the manuscript were S.T. Joshi and Karen Kohoutek. Both provided me with wonderful feedback. The second group remained anonymous, and we discussed what was necessary to change during this final phase of editing. Due to this process the book's research, sources, and content were scrutinized and improved upon. I'll not lie here, this process was somewhat painful and arduous, but in the end it vastly improved the monograph. 

All the above should give you a good idea as to the whys and wherefores of Renegades and Rogues. I hope that those who know only a little about Howard (but perhaps know more about his characters, especially Conan) will find this book helpful in understanding the man behind all these wonderful stories. I also hope that the seasoned Howard fan or scholar will benefit from these pages as well. That was my goal in writing this book. I sincerely hope you enjoy it and that you learn more about Robert E. Howard and his work.

Here is a book trailer for the biography:

Early reviews of the book:

“Todd B. Vick surveys the entire panoply of Robert E. Howard's times and life. Early twentieth-century Texas, so important to a young writer who almost never crossed its borders except in the mighty treads of his imagination, becomes a player in the action fully as much as Conan or Solomon Kane—and Renegades and Rogues is a truly outstanding biography because of it. The book is a terrific read that will grab you like the brawny iron arms of Khosatral Khel and not let you go.”

—Roy Thomas, former editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics and author of the Conan the Barbarian comic

“Renegades and Rogues is a compelling read. Vick does an outstanding job in portraying Howard’s family life, in describing the major incidents of his literary career, and especially in providing insightful details into the remarkable resurgence of Howard’s work in various media after his death.”

—S. T. Joshi, author of I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft

The book can be ordered at your local independent bookstore or online at:

The University of Texas Press

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Barlow Letters Related To Robert E. Howard by Bobby Derie

In The Two Bobs: Robert E. Howard and Robert H. Barlow it was mentioned that after the death of their mutual friend H. P. Lovecraft, Barlow became the literary executor for Lovecraft’s estate—which included the disposition of the file of letters from Robert E. Howard. Several letters pertinent to Barlow’s possession of these letters and efforts to get them to Dr. Isaac M. Howard, the late Robert E. Howard’s father, have been made available online by Brown University as part of their digitization of the Lovecraft materials, and make interesting reading concerning the posthumous afterlives of Barlow and his two literary correspondents.

R. H. Barlow to Elizabeth Spicer, 2 Apr 1937

Dear Miss Spicer, I pulled out rather abruptly & had no opportunity for farewells, but perhaps I’m forgiven. In about two weeks I’ll send you some Sterling items &c from KC. Thanks for putting up with all the bother I made while in Providence. Here is something for your files—revised, it will appear in in HAWK ON THE WIND—a book—in six or eight months. I beseech & implore you to keep the various correspondences—except R. E. Howard—under your hat & out of the catalogue. Their authors would boil me over a slow fire!—The sacrifices one makes in the interests of Literature. Regards to Prof. Damon. I’m going to write him when I settle. Yrs ever, R. H. Barlow

After Lovecraft’s death, Robert H. Barlow was made his literary executor; the young writer took steps to archive Lovecraft’s correspondence and other papers at the John Hay Library, where Elizabeth Spicer worked. The “Sterling” items were presumably related to Kenneth Sterling, one of Lovecraft’s later correspondents and his collaborator on “In the Walls of Eryx.” Barlow wrote this on his way back to Kansas City (“KC”) where he was attending the Art Institute. Hawk on the Wind” Poems (1938, Ritten House) was a collection of August Derleth’s poetry, containing “Elegy: In Providence the Spring…” regarding Lovecraft.

          Barlow’s desire to keep the correspondence from Lovecraft’s correspondents “out of the catalogue” was probably in an effort to protect their privacy; Howard was at this point already deceased, so this was less of an issue.

          By May of 1937, Dr. Isaac M. Howard had determined that Barlow was the executor of Lovecraft’s estate and was in possession of the letters from his son Robert E. Howard that Lovecraft had saved, mentioned above; Dr. Howard wrote to Barlow and to Lovecraft’s surviving aunt asking for their return, but did not receive a prompt reply, probably because Barlow’s situation was unsettled—the young writer would soon head out for California (IMH 164, 166).

As Howard letters were actually at the John Hay Library while Barlow was in Kansas City, this might explain some of the delay and confusion, but Barlow did eventually respond to Dr. Howard’s request.

R. H. Barlow to S. Foster Damon, 23 Apr 1937

Dear Professor Damon,   I am sending you a miscellany; too varied to itemise. Among the contents of the express package shipped today are a couple of pieces of sheet-music; a typescript of THE SPHINX, unpublished play by the author of THE HERMAPHRODITE & OTHER POEMS; nearly all the Ms. I have from the pen of Clark Ashton Smith, author of THE STAR-TREADER, EBONY & CRYSTAL, ODES & SONNETS, &c; a special issue of The Modern School on Whitman (1919) &c &c. Of these, I think I’d like to keep nominal ownership of the Whitman photograph, though in all probability it’s yours till Doomsday. Did you receive the Sterling letter sent in my last? The envelope turned up, and is enclosed in the Tomato Surprise. I have a few other things which I’m not quite ready to send, but will hand over later. I would appreciate it if you would send me the cardboard box containing letters from R. E. Howard, which I deposited. His father wants them to go to Howard Payne College. If you will send them Express collect, I shall be in your debt. Later, Mrs. Gamwell may want someone to look over Howard’s books for possible library donations, I believe there is not much for the Harris Collection, but other departments might find material. Yours ever, Barlow Am still typing dementedly on the “copy” for the Lovecraft collection to be published!

Unspeakable! The Secret History of Nameless Cults by Bobby Derie

As the John Hay Library at Brown University continues to digitize its collection, and place them online, interesting little tidbits are revealed for the more detail-minded among us.

Farnsworth Wright to H. P. Lovecraft, 2 Apr 1934

Dear Mr. Lovecraft: I just received your letter of last Friday, and hasten to answer it. I shall try to look up further authority regarding "unaussprechlich" and "unnennbar". If I can find good authority for "unaussprechlich" I am inclined to let that stand; for "unaussprechlich" has a sinsiter aspect that is lacking in "unnennbar". Just got a letter from the Sultan of the Southern Kingdom, Lord Malik (accompanying a manuscript). He and Juggernaut are about to leave the land of the Osages and trek westward. He hopes to see Conan the Reaver as he passes through Texas; and the Lord of Xothique and Averoigne after he leaves San Francisco. I envy him his trip. I read in yesterday's paper about the death in Baltimore of Edward Lucas White last Friday. He was 68 years of age, and died from illuminating gas--the journal does not say whether it was suicide or accident. He was a strange genius. My wife, who used to be a librarian before I married her, considered his "El Supremo" one of the very best adventure stories she ever read. I have not read it. We are keeping the windows of our office closed today, so as to retain what cool air there is; that is, cool compared with the air outside. The morning paper says that cooling off has begun in the far Northwest; so I suppose the coolness will reach here within a few days. But until then... I am glad that Barlow likes the pictures. I myself admired Doolin's illustration for THE STRANGE HIGH HOUSE. The trouble with Doolin is that although he occasionally turned out something good like this, yet the most of his illustrations lacked imagination. The lack of imagination is why we have let Wilcox go. I was surprized, when I read the page-proofs of THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY, to find no mention whatever of Unaussprechlichen Kulten. So there was nothing to change. In the typescript of Mrs. Heald's story, OUT OF THE EONS, Unaussprechlichen Kulten is mentioned twice; and I have changed this in the typescript (following Howard's example) to Nameless Cults. Thanks again for your promptness. Regards to both you and Barlow. Cordially yours, Wright.

 

Farnsworth Wright

[[ Link to letter, with images: https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:423149/ ]]

The beginning and the end of the letter concern Robert E. Howard’s creation Unaussprechlichen Kulten, which first appeared in “The Black Stone” (Weird Tales Nov 1931) and “The Thing on the Roof” (WT Feb 1932) under the English title Nameless Cults. The book, inspired by works such as Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, was well-received by HPL:

And this reminds me to remark how much I enjoyed “The Thing on the Roof”. That carried the sort of kick I enjoy! Before long I mean to quote Justin Geoffrey and von Juntz’s “Black Book” in some story of my own.

—H. P. Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, 16 Jan 1932, MF 1.264

Neither Lovecraft nor Howard were fluent in German, but Lovecraft felt the book should have a German title and attempted to create one. Before he used it, however, Lovecraft tried out the title on August Derleth, whose family retained some German (his grandmother being Pennsylvania Dutch), which led to this exchange:

By the way—in case I ever try any more tales for my own amusement, can you tell me if Ungenennte Hedenthume is an even approximately decent German equivalent of the title “Nameless Cults”? I want to be able to make casual allusions to von Junzt’s Black Book in the original. I only took German a year, & that was in 1906—the present possibly ridiculous attempt at translations being a result of blind & unintelligent groping in a meagre grammar & wholly inadequate dictionary. I thought it best to give the word “Cult” its darkest signification—the phrase as above being really, I suppose, “Unnamed Heathenisms”. Any light you can shed on this matter will be of the utmost interest to an illiterate old man. I have a remote notion of some day hinting at the reason why von Junzt’s great-grandson lately cut his throat after discovering certain papers in his ancestor’s long-sealed Düsseldorf attic.

—H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 28 Jan 1932, ES 2.446

 

Thanks for the original title of the Black Book. I feel sure that Unausprechlichen Kulten is the correct version!

—H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 2 Feb 1932, ES 2.448

Neither phrase is grammatically correct German, but Lovecraft passed the title on to Robert E. Howard.

I feel honored that you should refer to Von Junzt’s accursed document, and thanks for the German of “Nameless Cults”, which I’ll use in referring to it. Though I’ve lived adjacent to Germans for many years, I know nothing of the language—and neither do a lot of them.

—Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, Apr 1932, MF 1.279

The new title did not make an “official” appearance immediately, although Lovecraft began to make reference to it in his letters (cf. DS 367, MF 1.308, etc.) Lovecraft would first make reference to the book under its German title in “The Horror in the Museum” (WT Jul 1933), ghostwritten for Hazel Heald. Farnsworth Wright, however, was not in on the joke, as was apparent when he wrote:

The Literary Influences of Robert E. Howard: Arthur O. Friel by Todd B. Vick

Adventure June 3, 1921

Adventure magazine played an integral part in Robert E. Howard’s life as a writer (and reader). According to Howard, he discovered the magazine on a summer evening when he had “exhausted all the reading material on the place.” (CL 3.87) He apparently walked to downtown Cross Plains and ventured into one of the shops (possibly Higginbotham or one of the local drug stores; he never reveals the locale), and discovers the magazine on the rack. The stories in Adventure dazzled him so much he continued to purchase the magazine for years.

As best as I can determine, the Adventure magazine Howard purchased that summer evening was most likely the June 3, 1921 issue. The issue featured two writers who would make a lasting impression on fifteen-year-old Howard: Arthur O. Friel and Rafael Sabatini. Both writers are similar in style and content (e.g. swashbuckling sword fights, etc.), though the settings of their adventure stories are worlds apart; many of Friel’s stories are typically set in South America (Amazon/Brazil) and Sabatini’s in various different locales. Howard would utilize (and mimic) both writer’s style. From Friel, Howard borrows vast jungle settings, from Sabatini Howard borrows rapier sword duels (and other things). Sabatini also fueled Howard’s passion for pirate stories. We will examine Rafael Sabatini’s influence on Howard in a future post. For now, let’s turn our attention to Arthur O. Friel.

That June 3 1921 issue of Adventure was most likely the first time Howard had encountered Arthur O. Friel’s work. Friel’s story “The Barrigudo” was in that issue. After this first encounter with the magazine, Howard indicated that he continued to purchase Adventure for years, when he could afford it. By fall of 1921, October the 10th to be precise, Howard began reading Friel’s four-part series “The Pathless Trail.” The subsequent parts appeared in these issues of Adventure: October 20 (part 2), October 30 (part 3), and November 10 (part 4). This series and other stories by Friel would be paramount for Howard’s stylistic prose for several of his Solomon Kane and his latter adventure fantasy stories (e.g. Conan) stories.

Arthur Olney Friel

For sheer adventure in faraway uncharted Amazonian jungles, Friel was the consummate writer for Adventure. In fact, he had quite a large readership. Friel’s descriptive prose and quick paced action narrative would apply a deep brand on Howard’s early published works.  Now, back to Friel’s four-part series “The Pathless Trail.” I chose this series by Friel because Howard indicated that he read it (REHB appendix 2), and to a large degree, Howard mimics Friel’s narrative style and structure in several of his Solomon Kane stories. Howard uses this style and structure throughout his career in various places until he perfects it and places his own stamp on it, coupling it with his own signature prose rhythm and pace. He then uses it later in his Conan stories. This style also influences Howard’s writing voice throughout his publishing career. There are a handful of writers who influenced Howard in this fashion, and Friel is one of them.

The columns below show the similarities between Friel’s and Howard’s use of language, description, style, and sentence structure.

“Day by day the downflowing jungle river pushed steadily, sullenly against its prow, as if striving to repel the invasion of its secret places.” From Friel’s “The Pathless Trail”	“He gazed at the huts, wondering why the thatch roofs of so many were torn and rent, as if by taloned things seeking entrance.” From Howard’s “Wings in the Night”
“The bushman turned at once and stole away. The others turned the canoes, transported the necessary duffle to the base of the hollow tree, made camp, and squatted against the trunk to smoke, watch, and wait. Several times they heard calls receding in the distance. Then came silence.” (Ibid)	“When all were buckling from exhaustion. The sun dipped, night rushed on, and a halt was called. Camp was pitched, guards thrown out, and the slaves were fed scantily and given enough water to keep life in them – but only just enough.” From Howard’s “The Footfalls Within”
“Worming around gigantic columns, crawling over rotting trunks, changing directions abruptly when blocked by some great butt too high to be scaled, sinking ankle-deep in clinging mud, the venturesome band wound along through the wilderness. The general trend of the march was southeast, but impassable obstacles encountered at frequent intervals necessitated not only detours, but sometimes actual backtracking.” (Ibid)	“The littoral of the great river altered. Plains turned into swamps that stank with reptilian life. Where fertile meadows had rolled, forests reared up, growing into dank jungles. The changing ages wrought on the inhabitants of the city as well. They did not migrate to fresher lands. Reasons inexplicable to humanity held them to the ancient cities and their doom.” From Howard’s “Queen of the Black Coast”

These examples demonstrate that Howard, as a reader of stories and writers he loved, paid attention to what he was reading. Friel’s influence on Howard’s early and later writing style is certainly present in these three examples. There are a host of other examples between the two writers, but these three examples work well to drive home my point.

            A use of hearty pronouns to vividly describe landscapes and action in each of their stories was frequently utilized. In fact, the language and style between the two writers was fairly common among pulp writers. The writers who stood out among the hundreds of pulp writers from this era are, however, the ones who not only utilized these techniques, but chose their words carefully to help control their story’s pace, creating a much better tone and rhythm. Even though other pulp writers like Friel influenced Howard. Howard stood out due to his signature prose, distinct writing voice, and his ability to astutely control the pace of his narrative, taking hold of his reader and pulling them through the scenery and action. In other words, Howard took what he liked in Friel’s work, made it his own, and then wrote better and far more enduring tales.

The Pathless Trail
Time-Lost Series
Centaur Press, 1969

            With all this in mind, it’s interesting that Arthur O. Friel is mentioned only once in all of Robert E. Howard’s letters. In a letter to Carl Jacobi from the Summer of 1934, Howard declares, “I was much interested to note that you are acquainted with Arthur O. Friel. He has been one of my favorite authors for years.” That’s it, one simple statement indicating that Howard had read Friel’s work for years and that Friel was one of Howard’s favorite authors. We have certainly seen why this is the case. Interestingly, Arthur O. Friel never broke free from Adventure magazine into the wider publishing community. Although, in 1950 he managed to publish a collection of his stories from Adventure. Some of these same stories were republished in 1969 by Centaur Press for their Time-Lost series. It’s worth noting that three of the volumes in this same Time-Lost series from Centaur Press are Robert E. Howard collections containing several Solomon Kane tales and fragments. The two writers certainly complement each other in this series and, Howard would be proud to know his work was published in a series of works that included one of his favorite writers, Arthur O. Friel.

Works Cited
CL           Collected Letters
REHB     The Robert E. Howard Bookshelf
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane     Del Rey, 2004
The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian   Del Rey, 2003
The Pathless Trail   Centaur Press, 1969

The Literary Influences of Robert E. Howard: Robert W. Service by Todd B. Vick

From a very early age Robert E. Howard loved poetry. This was in large part due to his mother and her passion for verse. From the time Robert was born, Hester Howard recited poetry to her son. So naturally, Robert grew to love poetry. And there were a number of poets who influenced him as a reader and a writer. One such poet was Robert W. Service. His work loomed large in its influence of Robert E. Howard.

Robert W. Service

Service was born on January 14, 1874 in a small village named Preston, in Lancashire England just 20 or so miles northeast of the port town Liverpool. Service began writing poetry at an early age, heavily influenced by these Victorian poets: Tennyson, Browning and Keats. Several of these same poets, along with Robert W. Service played an integral part in influencing Howard’s verse. Service eventually moved to Canada, and settled in the Yukon territory. It took Service a bit of time to get his poetry published. Frankly, most poems and/or poets never make a living at their craft. With little success as a writer, to support himself Service took a job as a banker in the Pacific Northeast at the Canadian Bank of Commerce. All the while, he continued to write. Eventually Service managed to secure a publisher in London for his first collection of verse (Songs of Sourdough), published in 1907.

In the United States, Edward Stern and Company of Philadelphia published the same volume under a different title, The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses. This volume gained a large amount of readers in the early twentieth century. Robert E. Howard owned the United States edition of Service’s first collection, and he particularly enjoyed “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.” In fact, this poem eventually became one of the most memorized in the United States a few years after its publication. A few years later another collection by Service, Ballads of a Cheechako, garnered almost equal success as The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses, and Service was able to quit his job at the bank, write full-time and travel.

The Spell of the Yukon
and Other Verses
1907 edition

Robert W. Service’s influence can clearly be seen in many of Howard’s own poetry. Their rhyme and meter, heavily influenced by the Victorian poets, was similar. And among Howard's close friends, in particular Tevis Clyde Smith, Service's poetry was highly praised. According to Post Oaks and Sand Roughs, [Tevis Clyde Smith] Clive, considered Robert W. Service the greatest poet of all-time. Steve [Robert E. Howard] declared that Service was second only to Rudyard Kipling. [POSR, 74] Due to its content, Service’s poetry was ripe for the working class. This is likely one of the reasons Howard and Smith liked it. Without much sophistication, Service was able to delineate the common man and their struggles in his verse. Moreover, the content of many of Service’s verse was about frontier life in the Canadian Yukon, gold rushes, and man’s toil to survive. Of course, Howard loved those topics making Service’s verse resonate in his own imagination. Service’s poems were about the simple, ordinary life, and Howard especially liked this. In fact, on one occasion Howard told Lovecraft: “My tastes and habits are simple; I am neither erudite nor sophisticated. I prefer jazz to classical music, musical burlesque to Greek tragedy, A. Conan Doyle to Balzac, and [Robert] Bob Service’s verse to Santayana’s writing, a prize fight to a lecture on art.” [CL 3.66]

After his death, several of Service's books were present in Howard's personal book collection and donated to the Howard Payne College library; titles such as The Pretender, Ballads of a Bohemian, Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man, and The Spell of the Yukon and Others. Some of these books are now displayed in a bookcase at the Howard House and Museum in Cross Plains, Texas.

Works Cited
CL           Collected Letters
POSR      Post Oaks and Sand Roughs (Grant edition)

The Literary Influences of Robert E. Howard: James Branch Cabell by Todd B. Vick

Now that I have a bit more time to blog, I’ve decided to do a series about certain writers Robert E. Howard encountered in his life. Each post will cover one author whose work had some kind of influence on Howard’s life (as a reader) and/or his own work (as a writer). To inaugurate this series, I’ve chosen James Branch Cabell.

James Branch Cabell

Cabell was born April 14, 1879 in Richmond, Virginia, to an affluent family of medical doctors and politically connected Virginia ancestors. Because of this, Cabell was raised in what many believed to be an aureate environment. At fifteen, Cabell was enrolled in the prestigious College of William and Mary. He graduated four years later at age nineteen. Even then, Cabell was a master wordsmith and linguist, with a strong command of several languages. So much so, he taught French and Greek courses as a nineteen-year-old. He later became a journalist and began writing short stories and essays for Harper’s and the Saturday Evening Post. The latter being the most likely place Howard first encountered Cabell’s work. Cabell would eventually write novels, of which Jurgen: A Comedy Of Justice (1919) would be one of his most popular.

Cabell’s work has ebbed and flowed in popularity over the past century. When Cabell was alive and writing, H. L. Menken and Sinclair Lewis held the esteemed writer in high regard. Predominantly popular with the reading public of the 1920s and 1930s, Cabell wrote fantasy fiction, fictional satire, and was a master writer of essays written primarily for their aesthetic effect.; the latter likely being the main reason Menken enjoyed Cabell. Simply stated, Cabell was a wordsmith of the highest order. To be such and reach the masses required a near perfect balance between the common and highly sophisticated, a balance not easily reached by too many writers in literary history. This is also probably the reason Robert E. Howard enjoyed Cabell’s work, though the two writers are diametrically opposite in their styles and interests. Cabell’s sophisticated humorous sexual innuendos are what Howard most likely enjoyed.

             Cabell had little influence over Howard as a writer. Howard's humorous fiction was never as elaborate or as sophisticated as Cabell's, but much more low-brow and jocular; a slapstick style like the vaudevillian performances. The only time Howard ever emulated Cabell’s style was when he wrote his so-called book review of Cabell’s Something About Eve for The Junto. Besides the Junto, other places Howard’s review can be found is Amra volume 2, number 47 (August 1968), The Conan Grimoire (Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1972), and The Spell of Conan (New York: Ace Books, 1980).  In the Junto review, Howard assumes that the other Junto participants may have not heard of James Branch Cabell. He wrongly assumes this because he thinks that Cabell is not widely read. That might have been the case in the central Texas area of Cross Plains, but it was certainly not the case among  the broader population of readers in the United States and around the world. Cabell was, in fact, a quite popular author at the time Howard wrote his review of Something About Eve.

1927 edition, illustrated by
Frank C. Papé

In his review, Howard calls Cabell the ablest writer of the present age. Along with many other readers back then, Howard was seized by Cabell’s command of the English language. Something About Eve is Cabell at his finest. But Howard is especially attracted to Cabell’s cynicism, something to which Howard could relate. Cabell pokes fun at his own art, his readers, and the world in general. In Something About Eve, his sardonic humor is communicated through a nineteenth century romance gone awry that bores the protagonist so much he quickly acquiesces to the devil’s invitation of a wild promiscuous adventure elsewhere. In his Junto review, Howard’s focus is not on the plot or events of the Cabell’s novel so much as on the sexual innuendos, the way women are presented in the story, and Cabell’s linguistic prowess. In his review of Something About Eve, Howard attempts to emulate Cabell’s linguistic style. As far as I’ve been able to determine, this is the only place Howard does this. It’s uncertain which edition Howard reviewed. If it was the Robert M. McBride & Company 1929 edition, illustrated by Frank C. Papé, Howard would have delighted in the illustrations and likely mentioned those in his reviews. But he did not, so there’s no telling which edition he read.

In reading Howard’s collected letters, there are two letters where Cabell is mentioned. The first, is a humorous poem (“A Fable for Critics”) Howard sent to his Brownwood friend, Tevis Clyde Smith (CL 1:272). In it, several writers are mentioned in a comical way. Cabell is mentioned, knees knocking, embarrassed at the modern school (of writers) who drank and whored. On a second occasion, in a February 14, 1936 letter (Valentine’s Day) to Novalyne Price, Howard responds to Price’s struggle with a Cabell book she was reading. Howard indicates that he has not read that particular work by Cabell, but asks her to wait a few days until he can visit and go through the book with her. (CL 3:420). The title of Cabell’s book Price is struggling with is not mentioned. But it is interesting that Howard is confident that he can help her understand its contents. This would imply that he believed he had read enough of Cabell’s work to communicate confidently his ability to understand its contents.

 In late 1934 or early 1935, Howard was still buying Cabell’s work. In fact, on a date with Novalyne Price, they drove to Brownwood to visit Dublin’s Bookstore. Howard had his eye on a different edition of Omar Khayyam's The Rubáiyát. Being one of his favorite stories, he already had one copy, but this edition offered something the other, perhaps, did not. In addition, Price indicated that Howard also had his eye on a book by Cabell (OWWA, 92). She does not indicate the title of Cabell’s book, but this tells us that Howard was still actively buying and reading Cabell. Price was introduced to Cabell’s work through Howard and, on one occasion, she was apparently arguing with her cousin Mary Enid Gwathmey, likely about the sordid content of a Cabell book, which was interrupted by Gwathmey’s realization that Price was ill and had no business teaching that day. (OWWA, 123) Nothing else is said about Cabell, but this indicates that Price, probably because of Howard, was reading Cabell’s work.

1927 illustration by Frank C. Papé for "Something About Eve."

I have not been able to ascertain any indication that Howard was so influenced by Cabell that his own writing style and sentence structure changed in any of his own stories. Even so, Cabell did play an important role in Howard’s passion for literature, at least of a certain kind. The strongest indication of this is clearly seen in his review of Something About Eve. After Howard’s death, Cabell’s popularity slowly waned, especially once the second world war began. However, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the advent of The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, spearheaded by Lin Carter, James Branch Cabell made a brief but relatively strong resurgence in popularity. The Cabell titles chosen by Carter for The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series included: The Silver Stallion (August 1969), Figures of Earth (November 1969), The High Place (February 1970), Something About Eve (March 1971), The Cream of the Jest (September 1971), Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship (March 1972). Though there are likely other titles by Cabell that Howard read, the titles we know he read include: Something About Eve and The Cream of the Jest. The latter book was part of the Howard Payne University holdings, books from Robert’s personal collection given to the college by Dr. Howard after his son’s death.

I can’t help but wonder if Howard, despite his claims that he wrote for a paycheck, and the restrictive markets he was (in a sense) chained to, secretly desired to write on a level equivalent to Cabell. Among other authors, Howard pays Cabell some of his highest praise. And though Howard, likely to save face for some silly argument, disagreed with H.P. Lovecraft's opinion that writing could be considered a form of art, Cabell was probably the one writer who might have changed Howard’s mind on that opinion.

Works Cited
CL                The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard
OWWA         One Who Walked Alone

A Letter From Seabury Quinn by Bobby Derie

Seabury Quinn—whose longer tales I simply cannot wade through—is the perfect popular ideal—those who differ from him have just so much less chance of suiting cheap editors.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Emil Petaja, 4 Dec 1934, LWP 390

Seabury Quinn was the most popular writer at Weird Tales during his lifetime, and his sales eclipsed those of Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. Where those later writers have gained greater respectability in death, and their work published and republished, adapted to comics, film, music, and other media, Quinn’s fiction has only partially and periodically regained the notice of the public, and the study of his life and works largely neglected. In part, this is because unlike Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith, there are very few surviving letters from Quinn’s pen or typewriter, and those are mostly in private hands, unpublished, or lingering in obscure fanzines.

This is one such letter, a relative rarity both in length and content. It was written to Weird Tales fan Emil Petaja in December 1934. Around this period, Petaja had also written to and received letters back from both H. P. Lovecraft, recently collected in Letters with Donald and Howard Wandrei and to Emil Petaja from Hippocampus Press; and Robert E. Howard, the latter incident appearing in Novalyne Price Ellis’ memoir One Who Walked Alone.

[Address - Seabury Quinn] 24 Jefferson Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. December 6, 1934. Dear Mr. Petaja: Thanks a lot for the mighty good letter you sent me November 25. I’ve been intending to get an answer off ever since I received it, but the necessity of making a trip over to Cincinnati upset all my plans, and this is my first opportunity to attend to any personal correspondence for some time. About a Ms. I’m sorry, but I haven’t got such a thing around the house.[1] You see, I’m mos casual in my work. My stuff is roughed out in longhand---and very rough it is, too, being little more than a series of notes, set down for the most part in my own private system of shorthand. Then it’s typed, and I make only one copy---no carbons. They are a damned nuisance, and when one is an inexpert typist, such as I, the necessity of doubling all corrections makes the work too heavy for a lazy man. Too, the fact that I’m pretty much a one-magazine man, writing only for W.T., and then only as occasion, inclination and pressure of work permits,[2] I have a rather small output. In 1934, for instance, I wrote only three stories.[3] “The Jest of Warburg Tantavul” was published in September, in January will be another de Grandin yarn, and the last of the year’s output comes out in February, I think. I called it the Web of Bondage, but only God and the NRA[4] know what Farnsworth Wright will decide to call it when he prints it. However, it’s a departure---for me, at any rate. Not about Jules de Grandin --- but I hope you like it. Several of my readers have been kind enough to ask for Mss. and I have suggested that they write to Editor Wright and ask him for his copy when the printers are done with them. He’s a good scout, Wright is, and will let you have a Ms. if he has one available. Then, if you’ll trouble to send me the title page of the thing, I’ll be mighty glad to put my John Hancock on it and mail it back to you and voila, as we occasionally say in Brooklyn, you’ll have the autographed Ms. though only Secretary Wallace and the AAA know what you want of the damned thing.[5] Me, I always want to get rid of ‘em as fast as I can. Just at present I’m seething to go on some more yarns, but just haven’t been able to find time to put ‘em down on paper. I’ve a notebook full of new plot situations, and if I can get around to it, I can turn out a year’s supply for W.T. in a couple of months. The job is to get started, however. I’m not a slow workman. Two thousand words a sitting is my usual stint, and generally a story takes only about a week (evening work) from inception to mailing. Typing is the hardest work of all. If I could bawl ‘em out to a stenographer it would be a lot simpler, but I’ve tried it a couple of times with disastrous results. The darn girls all think they now what I wanted to say better than I did, with the result that dictation meant double duty--- one job of making notes and dictating, a second one of revising and “restoring” the typist’s ms. No luck in that. During October I was down in New Orleans and had a great time poking around a lot of out of the way places. Tried to drink up all the licker in town, too, but failed miserably in the effort.[6] But I came back with a lot of plot suggestions, and 1935 should see some of them germinating into real stories. An afternoon spent in old St. Louis cemetery, reading and coping the French epitaphs was an inspiration in itself.[7] Yeah, I surely feel the birth-pains tearing me right now. Have you read Price’s latest?[8] That feller is surely one great writer, as is Hamilton.[9] I’m a great admirer of Greye La Spina, too. She’s a hot number, and one of my greatest pleasures is to have her over to my place for dinner and a chat. How about Lovecraft? He, personally, is a delightful chap, but I don’t go for his writing in such a big way.[10] Like Hamilton better. Or Price, or Kline.[11] If you’d really like to have one of my Mss. just drop a line to Farnsworth Wright, tell him your desire, and I know he’ll be glad to let you have one. He’s might decent and accommodating that way. And thanks again for your kind criticisms of my work. I’m going to try to merit some more from you and the other W.T. readers in the coming year. Cordially yours, Seabury Quinn [12]

[1] Petaja, like R. H. Barlow, wrote to pulp writers asking for the manuscripts of their stories that appeared in Weird Tales.

[2] While not always a “one magazine man,” Weird Tales was the main outlet for Wright’s pulp fiction in this period, as The Magic Carpet Magazine had ceased publication in 1934.

[3] Probably “The Jest of Warburg Tentavul” (Weird Tales Sep 1934), “Hands of the Dead” (WT Jan 1935), and “The Web of Living Death” (WT Feb 1935).

[4] The National Recovery Administration.

[5] Henry Agard Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture and a supporter of Roosevelt’s New Deal administration, including the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA).

[6] Prohibition was repealed in December 1933.

[7] New Orleans formed a backdrop to several of Quinn’s stories, the French epitaphs may have been a possible inspiration for “Pledged to the Dead” (WT Oct 1937). In a letter to Virigl Finlay in 1937 about illustrations for the story, Quinn wrote:

To walk through old St. Louis Cemetery is to turn the clock back two centuries. Even in broad daylight, ladies arrayed as Julie was [...] St. Louis Cemetery in the moonlight --- how H. P. Lovecraft would have reveled in it! (FCA 25)

[8] E. Hoffmann Price, probably “Queen of the Lilin” (WT Nov 1934) starring Pierre d’Artois, his own occult detective. This was the last of the d’Artois stories, and Price wrote in the introduction to Far Lands and Other Days:

Quinn and I conferred. Although my Pierre d’Artois was coeval with his Jules de Grandin, so that neither could be considered as having influenced the other, Quinn’s hero had won such tremendous applause, and had appeared so many times, that I told him I did not wish to be in the position of doing pastiches. I dumped d’Artois. (xvii)

In his memoir of Quinn in the Book of the Dead, Price expanded on this:

Seabury and I exchanged letters, and I said to him, “This is not a matter to debate. As a matter of self protection, I am killing the Pierre d’Artois series, lest someone fancy that I am imitating you. Not that I would not—it is that I could not do a good job of it!” (164)

[9] Edmond Hamilton, better known for his space opera stories, but a Weird Tales regular.

[10] Quinn and Lovecraft had met in 1931; neither was particularly fond of the other’s approach to fiction, though they recognized their respective talents.

[11] Otis Adelbert Kline, who had some early success with Weird Tales and by the 1930s had largely turned to being an agent, working with E. Hoffmann Price, Frank Belknap Long, and Robert E. Howard among others.

[12] Quinn had a habit of drawing a smiley face (and, less often, a frownie face) in the culminating Q of his signed letters; this is very typical of the signatures in his letters to Virgil Finlay, published in the Fantasy Collectors Annual 1975.

Works Cited

FCA     Fantasy Collectors Annual 1975

LWP    Letters with Donald and Howard Wandrei and to Emil Petaja