S P A C E L I G H T
INDEX
Name: HOWARD, Robert Ervin
Aged: 30
Born: January 22, 1906
Where: Peaster, Texas
Died: June 11, 1936
Where: Cross Plains, Texas
Interred: Greenleaf
Memorial Cem - Brownwood, Texas
Married: No
Robert E. Howard
The major Sword and Sorcery author, creator of Conan (the barbarian) and Kull (the conqueror). A trademark in these stories was that males and females were treated equally.
Attended Howard Payne College. Lived and worked in Cross Plains, Texas. While reasonably successful at seeing his work published, many of Howard's stories were incomplete or unpublished, as was the majority of his poetry, when he chose to end his life by gun-shot in 1936. Given the time period Howard allowed himself, the amount of writing is awesome. Howard was writing in, at least, six genres at once.
The son of Dr. Isaac M. Howard & Hester Ervin, the writer was known as "Dr. Howard's crazy son," given to packing a gun against enemies unseen (including snakes), continually talking or singing loudly to himself in public, shadow-boxing as he walked, causing locals to cross the street to avoid this eccentric 'tough,' while mothers told their children to avoid this often unkept and scruffy looking man.
REH, as he is now familiarly known, wrote in a four by eight foot room, often to exhaustion, and explained that his talking out loud was a way of working out stories and since he authored many boxing stories, his shadow-boxing is understandable. But this type of genius, as anyone knows who has witnessed it, is unsettling from a distance. Howard's novel Post Oaks and Sand Roughs is claimed to be a slightly fictionized autobiography of an earlier time in his life.
Howard had a friendly relationship with Novalyn Price, a local schoolteacher. At age 76, Novalyn wrote the book, One Who Walks Alone - Robert E. Howard: The Final Years, as Novalyne Price Ellis, about her relationship with Howard. The book became the basis for the 1997 film, "The Whole Wide World," and offers a previously unseen side of the author.
Robert E. Howard would attend to his aging and ill mother, who had contracted tuberculosis, and committed suicide two days after she fell into a terminal coma. She died the next day and a double funeral was held. They were buried in a three grave plot that Howard had bought a couple days earlier.
Most, but not all, of the locals who knew Howard have passed on and REH's literary legacy to Cross Plains is now being recognized and promoted. Many of his works have & are being reprinted. The Howard home has been restored, collections have been acquired, original manuscripts gathered, and some placed in area libraries. Fans now annually arrive for an REH mini-convention. Howard would likely have been surprised at the attention . . . and, hopefully, pleased with the motion pictures.
Texas placed a State Historical Marker at the site of Robert E. Howard's grave in Greenleaf Cemetery (on US 377) in Brownwood. The Howard house in Cross Plains is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
"In assembling Howard, the gods somehow left out the
cogwheel that furnished love of life." L. Sprague De Camp
PEN NAMES: Patrick Ervin, John Taverel, Sam Walser, and also used a house name, Mark Adam, for non-genre boxing stories.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.
ONLINE BIOGRAPHY: Rusty Burke's excellent biography and the extensive links of the Robert E. Howard United Press Assc. And thanks to Rusty for adding corrections to my data.
