I recently received a copy of Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author by Willard M. Oliver [University of North Texas Press, 2025], at the author’s request. I found it an enjoyable and fascinating read, well worth my time. I would recommend it to any reader with an interest in Robert E. Howard, the history of sword and sorcery, or in understanding a writer’s process in creating stories and a career. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover and for Kindle as well as from the publisher.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with Robert E. Howard, he was the creator of Kull and Conan, and the author of the first undeniable sword and sorcery story. He lived most of his life in the small Texas town of Cross Plains, made his precarious living writing for pulp magazines, and died by his own hand at the age of thirty. Oliver goes far beyond the capsule biography to explore the details of Robert E. Howard’s life in the context of early 20th century rural West Texas and show’s how this environment influenced his work as well as the events of his life.
I found the Oliver’s writing in this book to be enjoyable to read. His passion for his subject comes through and his style is clear and concise enough for a general reader (such as myself) to engage with it. I wouldn’t say the book was fun to read, the last years of Howard’s life were very dark, but I found the story was told in a manner that was about as compelling as an academic work could be.
This is an academic work. I think it would be a good starting point for anyone with a scholarly interest in Robert E. Howard. I haven’t thoroughly explored the extensive notes and bibliography, but they are present for the person who wants to use this to delve deeper into the subject on their own. The many primary sources are discussed within the text, establishing their relevance and reliability, or lack thereof. Oliver notes that some accounts of events in Howard’s life conflict and that Howard himself wasn’t always entirely truthful when he wrote about his life and background.
One of the interesting themes of Oliver’s work is that Howard’s life experiences and environment have a direct effect on his characters and stories. This is reflected in the organization of Oliver’s book in which characters and stories are often discussed in relation to the events and ideas that gave rise to them. Of course, the creation of characters and the composition of stories now considered classics are important events in themselves and are treated as such.
Oliver is not afraid to express opinions and draw conclusions from the bare facts of Howard’s life. This would be a bad thing if there was ever a doubt about what was presented as fact and what was opinion, but there is no confusion between fact and opinion here. All opinions are clearly identified and well supported with evidence from the available sources.
There is one opinion Oliver expresses that I don’t want to agree with—that Robert E. Howard’s death was the result of his belief in absolute personal freedom. This idea is amply supported from Howard’s own writings which express that belief and make it clear that he had contemplated suicide for years and had planned to die when his mother passed, which is essentially what happened. It is also clear to me that he was severely depressed, that he had a stressful financial and personal life, and that he had become isolated and withdrawn prior to his end. Howard lived in a time when psychiatric care was primitive and unavailable where he lived. We can’t know if Howard’s life might have been different if the resources to help him had existed. While Oliver seems to present Howard’s death as fitting, possibly inevitable, he does not minimize it’s tragedy. Tragedy it certainly was. Considering how influential Robert E. Howard’s stories have become despite being published in fairly obscure magazines, we can only speculate on how his career might have progressed had it not been so brief.
Best,
Curtis Ellett
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