# Robert E. Howard - Maker: Pulp writer - Date: 1906–1936 - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/robert-e-howard/ > A young Texan who typed furiously for the pulps from a small oil town and created Conan the Cimmerian — the barbarian from whom sword and sorcery, the fighter class and a thousand games descend. **Why it matters:** Howard invented the modern sword-and-sorcery hero and the Hyborian Age, and Gygax named him among the most immediate influences on AD&D. Every barbarian in a game owes him something. ## Quick answers **Who was Robert E. Howard?** A young Texan who typed furiously for the pulps from a small oil town and created Conan the Cimmerian — the barbarian from whom sword and sorcery, the fighter class and a thousand games descend. **When was Robert E. Howard born?** Robert E. Howard was born in 1906 in Peaster, Texas and died in 1936. **What is Robert E. Howard known for?** Robert E. Howard is best known for Conan the Cimmerian. **Why does Robert E. Howard matter to fantasy and games?** Howard invented the modern sword-and-sorcery hero and the Hyborian Age, and Gygax named him among the most immediate influences on AD&D. Every barbarian in a game owes him something. ## Life Robert Ervin Howard was born on 22 January 1906 in Peaster, Texas, the only child of a country doctor, Isaac Howard, and his wife Hester. The family moved from town to town across the oil-boom country of central Texas before settling in 1919 in Cross Plains, a small town of a few thousand people that would be Howard's home for the rest of his life. He was a bookish, sensitive boy who took up boxing and weight training, and he grew into a big, powerful man who loved history, boxing and tall tales, and who resented the drudgery of every job he tried — soda-jerk, surveyor's assistant, stenographer, oil-field clerk. He decided early to live by writing, and he did. His first professional sale, the caveman story "Spear and Fang," appeared in [Weird Tales](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/weird-tales/) in July 1925 and brought him $16. By the early 1930s he was selling steadily to the pulps: horror, boxing yarns, westerns, historical adventures, "spicy" stories and humorous tall tales. In 1930 he began a long correspondence with [H. P. Lovecraft](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/h-p-lovecraft/) — letters full of arguments about civilization versus barbarism — and he also traded letters with [Clark Ashton Smith](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/clark-ashton-smith/). His one serious romance, with the schoolteacher Novalyne Price, later became her memoir *One Who Walked Alone* and the 1996 film *The Whole Wide World*. Howard was deeply attached to his mother, who was chronically ill with tuberculosis. On 11 June 1936, told that she would not regain consciousness, he took his own life in Cross Plains. He was thirty. ## Work Howard wrote some of the first genuinely new heroic fantasy in America. Solomon Kane, a grim Puritan swordsman who hunts evil across Africa and Europe, debuted in "Red Shadows" (1928). Kull of Atlantis appeared in "The Shadow Kingdom" (1929), a tale of serpent-men who wear human faces, and the Pictish king Bran Mak Morn in "Kings of the Night" (1930). Then, reworking an unsold Kull story, Howard created Conan. "The Phoenix on the Sword" appeared in *Weird Tales* in December 1932, and over the next four years he wrote some twenty Conan stories, most of them published in *Weird Tales*, including "The Tower of the Elephant," "Queen of the Black Coast," "Beyond the Black River," "Red Nails" and the novel *The Hour of the Dragon*. To make his stories hang together, Howard wrote an essay, "The Hyborian Age," laying out a fictional prehistory between the sinking of Atlantis and recorded history — a world of kingdoms like Aquilonia, Stygia and Zamora that let him borrow freely from real cultures without being bound by them. The result was [Conan the Cimmerian](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/conan-the-cimmerian/): a barbarian thief, pirate, mercenary and eventually king, driven by appetite and a code of his own, facing decadent sorcerers and things from beyond. It is the template of [Sword & Sorcery](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/sword-and-sorcery/). ## Legacy Howard's fame came posthumously. Gnome Press collected the Conan stories in the 1950s, and Lancer Books' paperback series from 1966, edited and expanded by L. Sprague de Camp and [Lin Carter](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/lin-carter/) and wrapped in [Frank Frazetta](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/frank-frazetta/)'s muscular covers, made Conan a counterculture icon. Comics followed, then John Milius's [Conan the Barbarian](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/conan-the-barbarian-film/) (1982), which made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star. For games, Howard's position is foundational. In [Appendix N](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/appendix-n/) of the 1979 *Dungeon Masters Guide*, [Gary Gygax](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/gary-gygax/) listed "the Conan series" and named Howard — with [Fritz Leiber](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/fritz-leiber/), [Jack Vance](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jack-vance/), Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and de Camp and Pratt — as the "most immediate influences" on [AD&D](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/advanced-dungeons-and-dragons/). The adventuring life of early [D&D](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/) — looting towers, fighting sorcerers, spending treasure on carousing — is Conan's life, and the barbarian class that appeared in *Unearthed Arcana* (1985) makes the debt explicit. [TSR](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/tsr/) licensed the character outright for the modules *CB1 Conan Unchained!* and *CB2 Conan Against Darkness!* (1984) and for David "Zeb" Cook's *Conan Role-Playing Game* (1985); later tabletop versions came from Steve Jackson Games' [GURPS](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/gurps/), Mongoose Publishing (2004) and Modiphius (2017). On screens, Funcom's MMO *Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures* (2008) and survival game *Conan Exiles* (2018) put players in the Hyborian Age directly. Howard lived to see none of it. ## Facts - Howard spent almost his whole life in small Texas towns, living with his parents in Cross Plains from 1919 until his death. - His first professional sale, the caveman tale 'Spear and Fang', appeared in Weird Tales in July 1925 and earned him $16. - Conan first appeared in 'The Phoenix on the Sword', Weird Tales, December 1932; the story was a rewrite of an unsold Kull tale. - From 1930 until his death he carried on a long, argumentative correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft, whom he never met. - Gygax named Howard among the 'most immediate influences' on AD&D in Appendix N, citing the Conan series. - TSR published a Conan Role-Playing Game designed by David 'Zeb' Cook in 1985. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Howard) - [Wikipedia: Hyborian Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyborian_Age) - [Wikipedia: Conan Role-Playing Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_Role-Playing_Game) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.