She had spent her early years helping a variety of sick relatives, contracting tuberculosis in the process. She had a particularly strong influence on her son's intellectual growth. Hester did not want Isaac to have anything to do with their son. Hester Howard, meanwhile, came to believe that she had married below herself. The Howard family had problems with money which may have been exacerbated by Isaac Howard investing in get-rich-quick schemes. ĭuring Howard's youth his parents' relationship began to break down. His early life was spent wandering through a variety of Texas cowtowns and boomtowns: Dark Valley (1906), Seminole (1908), Bronte (1909), Poteet (1910), Oran (1912), Wichita Falls (1913), Bagwell (1913), Cross Cut (1915), and Burkett (1917). Isaac Mordecai Howard, and his wife, Hester Jane Ervin Howard. Howard was born January 22, 1906, in Peaster, Texas, the only son of a traveling country physician, Dr. Howard at about five years old (circa 1911). His mother had been ill with tuberculosis her entire life, and upon learning she had entered a coma from which she was not expected to wake, he walked out to his car parked outside his kitchen window and shot himself in the head while sitting in the driver's seat. Howard's suicide and the circumstances surrounding it have led to speculation about his mental health. Howard remains a highly read author, with his best works still reprinted, and is one of the best-selling fantasy writers of all time. With Conan and his other heroes, Howard helped fashion the genre now known as sword and sorcery, spawning many imitators and giving him a large influence in the fantasy field. The main outlet for his stories was Weird Tales, where Howard created Conan the Barbarian. His greatest success occurred after his death.Īlthough a Conan novel was nearly published in 1934, Howard's stories were never collected during his lifetime.

Thereafter, until his death by suicide at age 30, Howard's writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he became proficient in several subgenres. From the age of nine he dreamed of becoming a writer of adventure fiction but did not have real success until he was 23. A bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of boxing and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding, eventually taking up amateur boxing. He spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains, with some time spent in nearby Brownwood. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre. He wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American writer. Sword and sorcery, westerns, boxing stories, historical, horror, southern gothicĬonan the Cimmerian (series), Solomon Kane (series), The Hour of the Dragon, ' Worms of the Earth', ' Pigeons from Hell'

Conan the barbarian robert e howard