American writer Robert Howard: biography, creativity and interesting facts

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Robert Howard is a famous American writer of the twentieth century. Howard's works are actively read even today, because the writer conquered all readers with his extraordinary stories and short stories. The heroes of the works of Robert Howard are known all over the world, as many of his books have been filmed.

Writer's biography

Robert Howard was born January 22, 1906 in a Texas village.

The writer's family was never rich. Robert Howard's father was a simple doctor in the countryside. Mother from an American simple family, but she was very well-read, loved poetic literature, which she introduced to the boy from a very early age.

For the first nine years of his life, Robert Howard constantly moved with his family from place to place. For a long time not finding their refuge, the family finally decided to settle in the small village of Cross Plains. Here was written the first book by Robert Irwin Howard, which was more like a short story about the adventures that the boy experienced on the road.

Writer's Youth

Robert Howard tried to earn his pocket money on his own. He worked in the cleaning department, in the shorthand department at an oil refinery, as a postman.

After graduating from school, Robert Howard took accounting courses in parallel with his work.

The young boy had a habit of carrying a gun, because he is a guy who grew up in Texas. Robert even got the nickname "Bob with two guns." In his free time, the guy shot at empty iron cans.

Writing activity

In 1927, Robert finally begins to try his hand at writing. Starting to engage in this type of activity, Robert remained a writer forever.

Since 1930, he began to communicate with Lovecraft. For many more years, literary figures have been in friendly correspondence.

In 1933, Howard begins a relationship with a beautiful woman who, in the future, after the death of the writer, will release a memoir about him. This work will form the basis of the film "The whole wide world", which was released in 1996.

Life Crisis

The life of the writer was not long. All his life the main woman was his mother. They were in a very close relationship. It was his mother who instilled in Robert a great love for fiction and poetry. She constantly supported her son in his endeavors, constantly read him poems.

In 1935, Howard's mother went through a very difficultoperation. The outcome of the medical intervention led to a coma. Robert, along with his father and his friends, spent all the time in the hospital, waiting for his mother to wake up. This time was very difficult for the writer: he hardly slept, drank too much coffee and became more and more depressed.

One morning a nurse approached the writer and said that there was no more hope. Robert reacted very calmly. He left the hospital, got into his car and shot himself in the head. Robert's father ran out of the hospital door with the doctor just seconds after the gunshot rang. However, they failed to save the young writer.

Lovecraft was very worried about the death of his friend. Constantly in an apathetic state, nine months after Howard's death, Lovecraft himself committed suicide.

Writer's work

Howard's first publication was his poem "The Sea", published in one of the city's newspapers in 1923. Fame has not yet come to the writer. The first of the prose works that brought recognition to Robert was the story "The Spear and the Fang", published in 1925. After numerous publications of Robert Howard's stories in various literary magazines, the writer began to be called one of the founders and creators of "heroic fantasy". In all literary circles, the writer is known as the creator of something new in literature. Nevertheless, there was no criticism of the writer, he went unnoticed by the literary figures of that time.

Real fame came after writing books about ConanVarvara. Robert Harvard is the author of a book cycle of 21 works. The first part of Robert Howard's Conan series was published in 1932.

All books by Robert Howard can be divided into several main genres. They are shown below.

Fantasy

More than fifty works of the writer can be attributed to this genre. Many of them are included in various book cycles. One of the most famous characters of this genre was Solomon Kane.

Works that are written outside of cycles are also known and readable in modern times. The writer constantly used in his works those characters who are representatives of ancient civilizations.

Mystic

In this genre, you can see that the writer repeatedly used elements of horror in his works. The most famous cycle in this genre was a series of books by Howard, telling readers about the life of John Kirovane, who was fond of studying the occult.

In addition, we can note a cycle of works, the main character of which was the werewolf De Monture.

In all these works, you can see small components that can characterize this section not only as mystical stories and novels, but also as works in the horror genre.

History

The most famous work that can be included in this section was the series of books about Solomon Kane. However, in the writer's repertoire there are a huge number of stories and novellas that are written outside of any cycles orseries.

Another interesting hero was a well-known American personality named Al-Borak. The writer devoted a whole book cycle to this character.

Robert Howard's books about Conan the Barbarian shocked the whole world. A series of books was recently filmed by an American film company.

Detectives

This includes one of the writer's first novels, Master of Destiny. However, the most famous work of this genre was a series of books about Steve Harrison, to whom the author dedicated many novels and stories.

Works about boxers

Robert wrote several book series and individual works about these representatives of the sport. The brightest characters were Little Alisson, Steve Costigan and Ace Jessel.

Westerns

The most famous cycle in this direction was a series of books, the central character of which was Breckenridge Elkins, who is a real gentleman and a resident of the Bear River.

Besides this cycle, there are several other western cycles to be found in the writer's archive. There are also stories, stories that are not included in any of the series.

Other works

In addition to all of the above, Robert is the author of many works in humorous and erotic prose. In addition, Robert Howard is the author of a large number of poems, which, unfortunately, do not enjoy such fame. You can also note all those articles that came out from under the hand of the writer, written in the form of sports reviews and literaryparodies.