Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author

     Born and raised in Texas, Robert E. Howard began his writing career after his family settled in the small Central Texas town of Cross Plains. His first professional sale came from the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1925, and over the next eleven years he wrote hundreds of stories and an equal number of poems. With this prolific body of stories, he was among the most lauded pulp authors of that era. It has been said, and rightly so, that the secret to his success was that there was a bit of Howard in every one of his characters, and because Howard was a Texan, even Conan shows elements of the Texan in his persona.

Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author details the many trials and tribulations he faced as he became—and remained—a full-time writer while dealing with an aging father and caring for a mother who was dying of tuberculosis. The book both chronicles his personal life and demonstrates how the one driving force in Robert E. Howard’s life—forming the foundation for all of his characters and stories—was his personal pursuit of freedom. He lived for his freedom, he wrote as a means to attain that freedom, and, while it may sound strange, he also died tragically by his own hand in that very same pursuit at the young age of 30.