Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, remains one of the most important literary figures in American fantasy. His influence has been as strong, as profound, as any contribution made by J.R.R. Tolkien or Lewis Carroll. Unlike those genteel British authors however, his work was a product of a very different environment – the corrupt, violent world of the Texan Oil-Boom.
The pulp magazines were born out of the Victorian penny dreadfuls and dime-novels, printed in huge volumes on the cheapest possible paper, and packed with lurid, exciting stories of all imaginable sorts. As printing technology got better the pulps lost ground, and modern comics took their place. At their height however, in the thirties, some of the pulps were selling a million copies an issue. The pulps were the perfect home for Howard’s bloody, action-packed tales, and he became hugely popular. Had he lived longer, he would have seen his work move outside them, but he took his own life as his first novel was nearing publication.
In just thirty years, he managed to write more than four hundred stories and five hundred poems. Many of them were published in his lifetime, enough to provide him with a very solid living. In addition to the genres he created himself, Sword and Sorcery and Weird West, Howard wrote substantially in the genres of boxing, westerns, horror, mythic/romantic history, adventure, comedy, mystery, and even some mild erotica. His legacy has been the most profound within fantasy however, and that is where he is best-remembered.
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