Misplaced Pages

#553446

98-602: The book was originally called Nameless Cults by Robert E. Howard in his stories " The Children of the Night " and " The Black Stone ", published in Weird Tales in 1931. It's unclear whether the book is a complete invention by Howard, or if he based it on an enhancement of a real book. H. P. Lovecraft gave it a German title more in keeping with the German name of the fictional author, von Junzt, when he started using it in stories set in

196-415: A "Conan yarn without sex interest." In another novel twist, Conan and the other protagonists have, at best, a pyrrhic victory ; this was rare for pulp magazines. This was followed by another experimental Conan story, " The Black Stranger ", with a similar setting. The story was, however, rejected by Weird Tales , which was rare for later Conan stories. Howard's next piece, " The Man-Eaters of Zamboula ",

294-501: A Conan novel that later became Drums of Tombalku . The third attempt at writing the novel was more successful, resulting in Howard's only Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon , which was probably started on or around March 17, 1934. This novel combines elements of two previous Conan stories, "Black Colossus" and "The Scarlet Citadel", with Arthurian myth and provides an overview of Conan and

392-457: A bimonthly publication and pulps such as Fight Stories , Action Stories , and Strange Tales all folded. Howard was further hit when his savings were wiped out in 1931 when the Farmer's National Bank failed , and again, after transferring to another bank, when that one failed as well. Early 1932 saw Howard taking one of his frequent trips around Texas. He traveled through the southern part of

490-542: A boxer called Kid Allison. Howard wrote ten stories for this series but Sport Story only published three of them. With solid markets now all buying up his stories regularly, Howard quit taking college classes, and indeed would never again work a regular job. At twenty-three years of age, from the middle of nowhere in Texas, he had become a full-time writer; he was making good money and his father began bragging about his success, not to mention buying multiple copies of his work in

588-438: A boxing-related ghost story published in the magazine Ghost Stories . In July of the same year, Argosy finally published one of Howard's stories, "Crowd-Horror", which was also a boxing story. Neither developed into ongoing series, however. After several minor successes and false starts, he struck gold again with a new series based on one of his favorite passions: boxing. July 1929 saw the debut of Sailor Steve Costigan in

686-467: 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. He died eight hours later. Howard was born January 22, 1906, in Peaster, Texas , the only son of a traveling country physician, Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard, and his wife, Hester Jane Ervin Howard. His early life was spent wandering through

784-543: A couple's romance and created a new one with a supernatural element; the story was re-titled " The Phoenix on the Sword ", an element from this new subplot. Howard immediately went on to write two more Conan stories. The first of these was " The Frost-Giant's Daughter ", an inversion of the Greek myth surrounding Apollo and Daphne, set much earlier in Conan's life. The last of the initial trio

882-446: A discussion of Lovecraft's work, Fritz Leiber described the "Haunter of the Dark" as "one of his finer tales (and his last)". The horror historian R. S. Hadji included "The Haunter of the Dark" on his list of the most frightening horror stories. The Robert Bloch Award is presented at the annual Necronomicon convention. Its recipient in 2013 was editor and scholar S. T. Joshi . The award

980-415: A full title of Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten ("Of Unspeakable Cults", as it were de cultibus ineffabilibus ) or similar or a dedication (i.e. (dedicated) to unspeakable cults ). However, Derleth was a German speaker, and the title was also supported by German-born Weird Tales illustrator C.C. Senf , against the opposition of Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright and writer E. Hoffmann Price . Since

1078-464: A heavy leather cover and iron clasps. Few copies of the earliest edition still exist because most were burnt by their owners when word of von Junzt's gruesome demise became common knowledge. An edition is known to be kept in a locked vault at the Miskatonic University library and some book collectors/occult scholars have managed to find copies. At least one copy is known to have been present at

SECTION 10

#1733093299554

1176-642: A house in the town with a cash down payment and made extensive renovations. That same year, sitting in a library in New Orleans while his father took medical courses at a nearby college, Howard discovered a book concerned with the scant fact and abundant legends surrounding an indigenous culture in ancient Scotland called the Picts . In 1920, the Vestal Well within the limits of Cross Plains struck oil and Cross Plains became an oil boomtown. Thousands of people arrived in

1274-533: A job writing oil news for the local newspaper Cross Plains Review at $ 5 per column. It was not until July 1925 that Howard received payment for his first printed story. Howard lost his job at the newspaper in the same year and spent one month working in a post office before quitting over the low wages. His next job, at the Cross Plains Natural Gas Company, did not last long due to his refusal to be subservient to his boss. He did manual labor for

1372-508: A letter dated March 10, 1932, Farnsworth Wright rejected "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" but noted that "The Phoenix on the Sword" had "points of real excellence" and suggested changes. "The God in the Bowl" would also be rejected and so a potential fourth Conan story concerning Conan as a thief was abandoned at the synopsis stage. Instead of abandoning the entire Conan concept, as had happened with previous failed characters, Howard rewrote "The Phoenix on

1470-892: A lightning strike, and a superstitious local doctor later removes the box containing the Shining Trapezohedron from the church and throws it into the Narragansett Bay . Robert Harrison Blake is a fictional horror writer who first appears, unnamed, in Robert Bloch's 1935 story " The Shambler from the Stars ". In Lovecraft's sequel, Blake dies while investigating the Starry Wisdom cult of Enoch Bowen. Lovecraft modeled Blake on Bloch, but also gave him characteristics that evoke Clark Ashton Smith and Lovecraft himself. Lovecraft indicated in his letters with then-young writer Robert Bloch , that

1568-410: A literary course but was not allowed to take one. The reason for this is undocumented, however biographer Mark Finn suggests that his father refused to pay for such a non-vocational education. In the week of Thanksgiving that year, and after years of rejection slips and near acceptances, he finally sold a short caveman tale titled "Spear and Fang", which netted him the sum of $ 16 and introduced him to

1666-513: A natural talent for prose writing and the encouragement of teachers, created in Howard an interest in becoming a professional writer. From the age of nine he began writing stories, mostly tales of historical fiction centering on Vikings , Arabs , battles , and bloodshed. One by one he discovered the authors who would influence his later work: Jack London and his stories of reincarnation and past lives, most notably The Star Rover (1915); Rudyard Kipling 's tales of subcontinent adventures;

1764-516: A new style of tale that ultimately became known as " sword and sorcery ". Featuring Kull , a barbarian precursor to later Howard heroes such as Conan , the tale hit Weird Tales in August 1929 and received fanfare from readers. Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright bought the story for $ 100, the most Howard had earned for a story at this time, and several more Kull stories followed. However, all but two were rejected, convincing Howard not to continue

1862-513: A pseudonym of Lovecraft he used as a five-year-old. The middle name Wilhelm is also due to Lovecraft. The following is a fictional account of the origin of Unaussprechlichen Kulten and its significance in the mythos. Unaussprechlichen Kulten is believed to have been written by Friedrich Wilhelm von Junzt . The first edition of the German text (referred to by some as "The Black Book") appeared during 1839 in Düsseldorf . The English edition

1960-692: A result of this apprenticeship, his stories increasingly took on the aura of "prose-poems" filled with hypnotic, dreamy imagery and a power lacking in most other pulp efforts of the time. Further story sales to Weird Tales were sporadic but encouraging, and soon Howard was a regular in the magazine. His first cover story was for " Wolfshead ", a werewolf story published when he was only twenty. On reading "Wolfshead" in Weird Tales Howard became dismayed with his writing. He quit his stenographer's job to work at Robertson's Drug Store, where he rose to become head soda jerk on $ 80 per week. However, he resented

2058-540: A self-created regimen of exercise, including cutting down oak trees and chopping them into firewood every day, lifting weights, punching a bag and springing exercises, eventually building himself from a skinny teenager into a more muscled, burly form. Howard spent his late teens working odd jobs around Cross Plains, all of which he hated. In 1924, Howard returned to Brownwood to take a stenography course at Howard Payne College , this time boarding with his friend Lindsey Tyson instead of his mother. Howard would have preferred

SECTION 20

#1733093299554

2156-517: A series in print beyond just two stories, with seven Kane stories printed from 1928 to 1932. As the magazine published the Solomon Kane tale before Kull, this can be considered the first published example of sword and sorcery. 1929 was the year Howard broke out into other pulp markets, rather than just Weird Tales . The first story he sold to another magazine was "The Apparition in the Prize Ring",

2254-498: A single soul and meeting one common dissolution at the same moment." An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia suggests that this interpretation is the key to understanding the ending of "The Haunter of the Dark": "[W]e are to believe that the entity in the church--the Haunter of the Dark, described as an avatar of Nyarlathotep--has possessed Blake's mind but, at the moment of doing so, is struck by lightning and killed, and Blake dies as well." In

2352-602: A story which became "The Tunneler Below" and finally "The Terror from the Depths" (in Disciples of Cthulhu Cthulhu Mythos anthology ). Robert M. Price has also used the title "The Burrower Beneath" for a story set in the Eibonic mythos of Clark Ashton Smith —see Price's anthology The Book of Eibon (Chaosium, 2002). Leigh Blackmore 's poem "The Conjuration" (in his collection Spores from Sharnoth and Other Madnesses , P'rea Press, 2008)

2450-593: A surveyor for a time before beginning a job as a stenographer for an oil company. In conjunction with his friend Tevis Clyde Smith , he dabbled heavily in verse, writing hundreds of poems and getting dozens published in Weird Tales and assorted poetry journals. With poor sales, and many publishers recoiling from his subject matter, Howard ultimately judged poetry writing a luxury he could not afford, and after 1930 he wrote little verse, instead dedicating his time to short stories and higher-paying markets. Nevertheless, as

2548-799: A third story, "The Shadow from the Steeple" ( 1950 ), to create a trilogy. Several of the surface details of the plot were taken directly from Hanns Heinz Ewers ' "The Spider", which Lovecraft read in Dashiell Hammett 's anthology Creeps By Night (1931). In Blake's final notes, he refers to "Roderick Usher", an allusion to Edgar Allan Poe 's " The Fall of the House of Usher ", which Lovecraft described in " Supernatural Horror in Literature " as featuring "an abnormally linked trinity of entities...a brother, his twin sister, and their incredibly ancient house all sharing

2646-502: 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). During Howard's youth his parents' relationship began to break down. The Howard family had problems with money, which might have been exacerbated by Isaac Howard investing in get-rich-quick schemes. Hester Howard, meanwhile, came to believe that she had married below herself. Soon

2744-407: A variety of series characters. Soon he was submitting stories to magazines such as Adventure and Argosy . Rejections piled up, and with no mentors or instructions of any kind to aid him, Howard became a writing autodidact , methodically studying the markets and tailoring his stories and style to each. In the fall of 1922, when Howard was sixteen, he temporarily moved to a boarding house in

2842-491: A vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. By virtue of this, Howard quickly became a member of the "Lovecraft Circle", a group of writers and friends all linked via the immense correspondence of H. P. Lovecraft (who wrote over 100,000 letters in his lifetime ), who made it a point to introduce his many like-minded friends to one another and encourage them to share stories, utilize each other's invented fictional trappings, and help each other succeed in

2940-524: Is G. K. Chesterton 's The Ballad of the White Horse and Chesterton's concept that "it is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment." By March, Howard had recycled an unpublished Kull story called " By This Axe I Rule! " into his first Conan story. The central plot remains that of a barbarian having become king of a civilized country and a conspiracy to assassinate him. However, he removed an entire subplot concerning

3038-443: Is Howard's earliest surviving boxing story known to exist; it is told in the first person, uses elements of a traditional tall-tale and is a fictionalized account of Howard (as "Steve") and his friend Lindsey Tyson (as "Spike") training for a fight. This story and the elements it uses would also be important in Howard's literary future. In May 1927, after having to return home due to contracting measles and then being forced to retake

Unaussprechlichen Kulten - Misplaced Pages Continue

3136-424: Is mentioned in "The Haunter of the Dark" as a planet more distant from Earth than Yuggoth ; this may suggest that Blake's writing of a story with that title is a foreshadowing of his mental link with the 'Haunter', which Blake believes to be an avatar of Nyarlathotep . Brian Lumley borrowed the title The Burrowers Beneath for his first novel (1974). Fritz Leiber also used the title "The Burrower Beneath" for

3234-673: Is most commonly sourced. The principal obscurity of the book is von Junzt's use of the word keys —"a phrase used many times by him, in various relations"—in connection with certain items and locations, such as the Black Stone and the Temple of the Toad (possibly associated with Tsathoggua ) in Honduras . In F. Paul Wilson 's 1981 novel The Keep , Captain Klaus Woermann reads an excerpt from

3332-819: Is referred to in Ramsey Campbell 's "The Franklyn Paragraphs" (1973) and Philip José Farmer 's "The Freshman" (1979). Lovecraft's tale names five stories written by Robert Blake: "The Burrowers Beneath"; "Shaggai"; "The Stairs in the Crypt"; "In the Vale of Pnath" and "The Feaster from the Stars" which as Robert M. Price has pointed out are friendly spoofs of tales written by Robert Bloch (for more info see Price's anthology The Book of Eibon (Chaosium, 2002, p. 191)). Author Lin Carter wrote stories which are pastiches of either Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith utilising all five titles. Shaggai

3430-402: Is the second stanza of Lovecraft's 1917 poem "Nemesis". The story is a sequel to " The Shambler from the Stars " by Robert Bloch . Bloch wrote a third story in the sequence, " The Shadow from the Steeple ", in 1950. In Providence , Robert Blake, a young writer with an interest in the occult , becomes fascinated by a large disused church on Federal Hill which he can see from his lodgings on

3528-526: The Cthulhu Mythos . Not being a German speaker, Lovecraft asked his protege August Derleth for a translation. Unaussprechlichen Kulten was Derleth's suggestion. Derleth and others in the Lovecraft circle subsequently used both the book and the author in their stories. Unaussprechliche Kulte would be the German for " unspeakable cults". The form Unaussprechlichen Kulten is the dative case , suggesting

3626-452: The Middle Ages and the early Renaissance , tales that rival even his best Conan stories for their historical sweep and splendor. In addition to series characters such as Turlogh Dubh O'Brien and Cormac Fitzgeoffrey , Howard sold a variety of tales depicting various times and periods from the fall of Rome to the fifteenth century. The magazine eventually ceased publication in 1934 due to

3724-543: The Unaussprechlichen Kulten and finds it a disturbing experience. However, the text doesn't appear to be the same absolute forerunner of doom as the Necronomicon . The 2009 novel Triumff by Dan Abnett features a page of the Unaussprechlichen Kulten , shown to the titular hero as a test to see if he has ever studied Goetia . It induces instinctive nausea in those never previously exposed to pure Lore. In

3822-418: The "Shining Trapezohedron " which has the property of being able to summon a terrible being from the depths of time and space. The trapezohedron rests in a metal box with a hinged lid; the box is incised with designs representing living but distinctly alien creatures. The whole sits atop a column which is also incised with alien designs or characters. Blake's interference inadvertently summons the malign being of

3920-405: The 1992 PC game, Alone in the Dark . There is also a reference to the book, along with one to the Necronomicon , in the 2015 video game Wolfenstein: The Old Blood . A death metal band from Chile adopted the name Unaussprechlichen Kulten . Their lyrics are inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft . Robert E. Howard Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936)

4018-503: The 2013 novel The Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly the book is among the volumes in poor condition offered, presumably at very low prices, on a table outside the door of a used book dealer in London. "Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten" is the title of a song by death metal band Nile from their 2005 album Annihilation of the Wicked . There is a reference to Unaussprechlichen Kulten in

Unaussprechlichen Kulten - Misplaced Pages Continue

4116-513: The Border ". This was the first Conan tale to have an explicit ( Robert W. Chambers -influenced) American setting, although American themes had appeared earlier, and the only one in which Conan himself does not appear. His next story was based on his unfinished material and became " Beyond the Black River ", which not only used the different American-frontier setting but was also, in Howard's own words,

4214-459: The Dark " The Haunter of the Dark " is a horror short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft , written between 5–9 November 1935 and published in the December 1936 edition of Weird Tales (Vol. 28, No. 5, p. 538–53). It was the last written of the author's known stories (other than a few collaborations written after it) and is part of the Cthulhu Mythos . The epigraph to the story

4312-531: The Depression, leaving several of Howard's stories aimed at this market unsold. In August 1930 Howard wrote a letter to Weird Tales praising a recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft 's " The Rats in the Walls " and discussing some of the obscure Gaelic references used within. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded warmly to Howard, and soon the two Weird Tales veterans were engaged in

4410-506: The Depression. Also in this period, Howard wrote the first of the James Allison stories, "Marchers of Valhalla". Allison is a disabled Texan who begins to recall his past lives, the first of which is in the later part of Howard's new Hyborian age. In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith in October 1933, he wrote that its sequel "The Garden of Fear" was "dealing with one of my various conceptions of

4508-439: The German adjective may not only translate to "unspeakable, unutterable, ineffable", but also to "unpronounceable, tongue-twisting", the title might serve as a description of the names invented by Lovecraft. Part of Price's objection to the title, besides the grammatical issue, was this alternative meaning which he believed did not convey the required feeling of dread. He suggested instead Unnennbaren Kulten (Unnameable Cults), but

4606-450: The Headland ", " The Children of the Night " and " The Fire of Asshurbanipal "). He also corresponded with other "Weird Tale" writers such as Clark Ashton Smith , August Derleth , and E. Hoffmann Price . The correspondence between Howard and Lovecraft contained a lengthy discussion on a frequent element in Howard's fiction, barbarism versus civilization. Howard held that civilization

4704-470: The Hyborian age for the new British audience. Howard sent his final draft to Denis Archer on May 20, 1934. He had worked exclusively on the novel for two months, writing approximately 5,000 words per day, seven days a week. Although he told acquaintances that he had little hope for this novel, he had put a lot of effort into it. However, the publisher went into receivership in late 1934, before it could print

4802-536: The Hyborian and post-Hyborian world." In May 1933, a British publisher, Denis Archer, contacted Howard about publishing a book in the United Kingdom. Howard submitted a batch of his best available stories, including "The Tower of the Elephant" and " The Scarlet Citadel ", on June 15. In January 1934 the publisher rejected the collection but suggested a novel instead. Though the publisher was "exceedingly interested" in

4900-712: The Picts in their struggle against the invading Romans , and introduced readers to Howard's king of the Picts, Bran Mak Morn . Howard followed up this tale with the now-classic revenge nightmare " Worms of the Earth " and several other tales, creating horrific adventures tinged with a Cthulhu -esque gloss and notable for their use of metaphor and symbolism. With the onset of the Great Depression , many pulp markets reduced their schedules or went out of business entirely. Howard saw market after market falter and vanish. Weird Tales became

4998-402: The Sword" based on Wright's feedback and including material from his essay. Both this revision and the next Conan story, " The Tower of the Elephant ", sold with no problems. Howard had written nine Conan stories before the first saw print. Conan first appeared to the public in Weird Tales in December 1932 and was such a hit that Howard was eventually able to place seventeen Conan stories in

SECTION 50

#1733093299554

5096-403: The abandoned church on Federal Hill in Lovecraft's short story " The Haunter of the Dark ". The text contains information on cults who worship pre-human deities such as Ghatanothoa and includes hieroglyphs relating to the latter. There is also information on more recent cults including that of Bran Mak Morn , or "The Dark Man." It is from this work that the tale of the doomed heretic T'yog

5194-496: The age of nine, he longed to become a writer of adventure fiction but did not have real success until he was 23. 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. His greatest success occurred after his death. Although a Conan novel was nearly published in 1934, Howard's stories were never collected during his lifetime. The main outlet for his stories

5292-432: The character Robert Blake was an intentionally thinly veiled gesture at killing off one of his friendly correspondents. In 1936, Bloch published a story that continued the professional fun, in which Blake did not actually die, but was possessed by Nyarlathotep, and kills off a character based on Lovecraft. Blake's death is the starting point for another sequel by Bloch, "The Shadow from the Steeple" (1950). Blake's fiction

5390-412: The character of Conan . Later, in 1935, Howard claimed in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith that Conan "simply grew up in my mind a few years ago when I was stopping in a little border town on the lower Rio Grande." However, the character actually took nine months to develop. Howard had originally used the name "Conan" for a Gael reaver in a past-life-themed story he completed in October 1931, which

5488-461: The citizenry by so-called 'civilized' leaders. Howard initially deferred to Lovecraft but gradually asserted his own views, even coming to deride Lovecraft's opinions. In 1930, with his interest in Solomon Kane dwindling and his Kull stories not catching on, Howard applied his new sword-and-sorcery and horror experience to one of his first loves: the Picts . His story "Kings of the Night" depicted King Kull conjured into pre-Christian Britain to aid

5586-467: The city's east side. His research reveals that the church has a sinister history involving a cult called the Church of Starry Wisdom and is dreaded by the local migrant inhabitants as being haunted by a primordial evil. Blake enters the church and ascends the tower, where he discovers the skeleton of Edwin M. Lillibridge, a reporter who disappeared in 1893. He also discovers an ancient stone artifact known as

5684-482: The classic mythological tales collected by Thomas Bulfinch . Howard was considered by friends to be eidetic , and astounded them with his ability to memorize lengthy reams of poetry with ease after one or two readings. In 1919, when Howard was thirteen, Dr. Howard moved his family to the Central Texas hamlet of Cross Plains , and there the family would stay for the rest of Howard's life. Howard's father bought

5782-606: The combination of a traditional tall tale and slapstick comedy. Stories sold to Fight Stories provided Howard with a market just as stable as Weird Tales . Due to his success in Fight Stories , Howard was contacted by the publisher Street & Smith in February 1931 with a request to move the Steve Costigan stories to their own pulp Sport Story Magazine . Howard refused but created a new, similar series just for them based on

5880-618: The course, Howard passed his exams. While waiting for the official graduation in August, he returned to writing, including a re-write of "The Shadow Kingdom". He rewrote it again in August and submitted it to Weird Tales in September. This story was an experiment with the entire concept of the "weird tale" horror fiction as defined by practitioners such as Edgar Allan Poe , A. Merritt , and H. P. Lovecraft , mixing elements of fantasy, horror and mythology with historical romance , action and swordplay into thematic vehicles never before seen,

5978-421: The drug store and, in September, returned to Brownwood to complete his bookkeeping course. It was during this August that he began working on the story that would become " The Shadow Kingdom ", one of the most important works of his career. While at college, Howard wrote for their newspaper, The Yellow Jacket . One of the short stories printed in this newspaper was a comedy called "Cupid vs. Pollux". This story

SECTION 60

#1733093299554

6076-460: The final version. " Rogues in the House " is the only Conan story to be completed in a single draft. These stories sold easily and they include the first and second Conan stories to feature on the cover of Weird Tales , " Black Colossus " and " Xuthal of the Dusk ". Howard's motivation for quick and easy sales at this time was influenced by the collapse of some other markets, such as Fight Stories , in

6174-453: The first name Friedrich is in a fake death warrant for himself that Lovecraft sent to Bloch. Bloch had used Lovecraft as a character in his story " The Shambler from the Stars ". The death warrant was by way of giving Bloch permission to kill off the character. Besides von Junzt, the death warrant is also signed, amongst others, by Abdul Alhazred, the fictional author of the Necronomicon and

6272-491: The genre of sword and sorcery grew up around Howard's masterwork, with dozens of practitioners evoking Howard's creation to one degree or another. In spring 1933, Howard started to place work with Otis Adelbert Kline , a former pulp writer, as his agent. Kline encouraged him to try writing in other genres in order to expand into different markets. Kline's agency was successful in finding outlets for more of Howard's stories and even placed works that had been rejected when Howard

6370-512: The job itself and worked such long hours every day of the week that he became ill. He relaxed by visiting the Neeb Ice House, to which he was introduced by an oil field worker befriended at the drug store, to drink and began to take part in boxing matches. These matches became an important part of his life; the combination of boxing and writing provided an outlet for his frustrations and anger. In August 1926, Howard quit his exhausting job at

6468-523: The magazine between 1933 and 1936. Howard then took a short break from Conan after his initial burst of stories, returning to the character in mid-1933. These stories, his "middle period", are routine and considered the weakest of the series. Stories, such as " Iron Shadows in the Moon ", were often simply Conan rescuing a damsel in distress from a monster in some ruins. While earlier Conan stories had three or four drafts, some in this period had only two including

6566-641: The nearby city of Brownwood to complete his senior year of high school, accompanied by his mother. It was in Brownwood that he first met friends his own age who shared his interest not only for sports and history but also writing and poetry. The two most important of these, Tevis Clyde Smith and Truett Vinson, shared his Bohemian and literary outlook on life, and together they wrote amateur papers and magazines, exchanged long letters filled with poetry and existential thoughts on life and philosophy, and encouraged each other's writing endeavors. Through Vinson, Howard

6664-400: The novel. The story was briefly held as part of the company's assets before being returned to Howard. It was later printed in Weird Tales as a serial over five months, beginning with the December 1935 issue. Howard may have begun losing interest in Conan in late 1934, with a growing desire to write westerns. He began to write, although never finished, a Conan story called " Wolves Beyond

6762-456: The omnipresence of evil and enemies in the world, and taught him the value of physical strength and violence. As the son of the local doctor, Howard had frequent exposure to the effects of injury and violence, due to accidents on farms and oil fields combined with the massive increase in crime that came with the oil boom . Firsthand tales of gunfights, lynchings , feuds , and Indian raids developed his distinctly Texan, hardboiled outlook on

6860-460: The pages of Fight Stories . A tough-as-nails, two-fisted mariner with a head of rocks and occasionally a heart of gold, Costigan began boxing his way through a variety of exotic seaports and adventure locales, becoming so popular in Fight Stories that the same editors began using additional Costigan episodes in their sister magazine Action Stories . The series saw a return to Howard's use of humor and ( unreliable ) first-person narration, with

6958-659: The pair were actively fighting. Hester did not want Isaac to have anything to do with their son. She had a particularly strong influence on her son's intellectual growth. She had spent her early years helping a variety of sick relatives, contracting tuberculosis in the process. She instilled in her son a deep love of poetry and literature, recited verse daily and supported him unceasingly in his efforts to write. Other experiences would later seep into his prose. Although he loved reading and learning, he found school to be confining and began to hate having anyone in authority over him. Experiences watching and confronting bullies revealed

7056-536: The people who came with it. He was already poorly disposed towards oil booms as they were the cause of the constant traveling in his early years but this was aggravated by what he perceived to be the effect oil booms had on towns. "I'll say one thing about an oil boom; it will teach a kid that Life's a pretty rotten thing as quick as anything I can think of." At fifteen Howard first sampled pulp magazines , especially Adventure and its star authors Talbot Mundy and Harold Lamb . The next few years saw him creating

7154-413: The power to remain on. However, an outage occurs and the being flies towards Blake's quarters. He is subsequently found dead, staring out of his window at the church with a look of horror on his face. His last words refer to his perception of the approaching being: "I see it-- coming here-- hell-wind-- titan-blur-- black wings-- Yog-Sothoth save me-- the three-lobed burning eye..." His death is put down to

7252-661: The pulp field. In time this circle of correspondents has developed a legendary patina about it rivaling similar literary conclaves such as The Inklings , the Bloomsbury Group , and the Beats . Howard was given the affectionate nickname "Two-Gun Bob" by virtue of his long explications to Lovecraft about the history of his beloved Southwest , and during the ensuing years he contributed several notable elements to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos of horror stories (beginning with " The Black Stone ", his Mythos stories also included " The Cairn on

7350-641: The pulps. Howard's " Celtic phase" began in 1930, during which he became fascinated by Celtic themes and his own Irish ancestry. He shared this enthusiasm with Harold Preece , a friend made in Austin in the summer of 1927; Howard's letters to both Preece and Clyde Smith contain much Irish-related material and discussion. Howard taught himself a little Gaelic , examined the Irish parts of his family history and began writing about Irish characters. Turlogh Dubh O'Brien and Cormac Mac Art were created at this time, although he

7448-559: The readers of a struggling pulp called Weird Tales . Now that his career in fiction had begun, Howard dropped out of Howard Payne College at the end of the semester and returned to Cross Plains. Shortly afterwards, he received notice that another story, "The Hyena", had been accepted by Weird Tales . During the same period, Howard made his first attempt to write a novel, a loosely autobiographical book modeled on Jack London 's Martin Eden and titled Post Oaks & Sand Roughs . The book

7546-607: The research necessary for a purely historical setting was too time-consuming for him to engage in on a regular basis and still earn a living. The Hyborian Age, with its varied settings similar to real places and eras of history, allowed him to write fantastical historical fiction without such problems. He may have been inspired in the creation of his setting by Thomas Bulfinch 's 1913 edition of his Bulfinch's Mythology called The Outline of Mythology , which contained stories from history and legend, including many that were direct influences on Howard's work. Another potential inspiration

7644-407: The series. In March 1928, Howard salvaged and re-submitted to Weird Tales a story rejected by the more popular pulp Argosy , and the result was " Red Shadows ", the first of many stories featuring the vengeful Puritan swashbuckler Solomon Kane . Appearing in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales , the character was a big hit with readers and this was the first of Howard's characters to sustain

7742-496: The state with his main occupation being, in his own words, "the wholesale consumption of tortillas, enchiladas and cheap Spanish wine." In Fredericksburg , while overlooking sullen hills through a misty rain, he conceived of the fantasy land of Cimmeria , a bitter hard northern region home to fearsome barbarians. In February, while in Mission , he wrote the poem Cimmeria . It was also during this trip that Howard first conceived of

7840-447: The stories, the rejection letter explained that there was a "prejudice that is very strong over here just now against collections of short stories." The suggested novel, however, could be published by Pawling and Ness Ltd in a first edition of 5,000 copies for lending libraries. In late 1933 Howard returned to Conan, starting again slightly awkwardly with " The Devil in Iron ". However, this

7938-474: The third following a few days later. With these three completed he created an essay called " The Hyborian Age " in order to flesh out his setting in more detail. There were four drafts of this essay, starting with a two-page outline and finishing as an 8,000-word essay. Howard supplemented this with two sketched maps and an additional short piece entitled "Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age." In

8036-440: The title, and he flees the church. The being can only go abroad in darkness, and is hence constrained to the tower at night by the presence of the lights of the city. However, when the city's electrical power is weakened during a thunderstorm, the local people are terrified by the sounds coming from the church and call on their Catholic priests to lead prayers against the demon. Blake, aware of what he has let loose, also prays for

8134-417: The town looking for oil wealth. New businesses sprang up from scratch and the crime rate increased to match. Cross Plains' population quickly grew from 1,500 to 10,000, it suffered overcrowding, the traffic ruined its unpaved roads and vice crime exploded but it also used its new wealth on civic improvements, including a new school, an ice manufacturing plant, and new hotels. Howard hated the boom and despised

8232-434: The world. Sports, especially boxing , became a passionate preoccupation. At the time, boxing was the most popular sport in the country, with a cultural influence far in excess of what it is today. James J. Jeffries , Jack Johnson , Bob Fitzsimmons , and later Jack Dempsey were the names that inspired during those years, and he grew up a lover of all contests of violent, masculine struggle. Voracious reading, along with

8330-626: Was Weird Tales , where Howard created Conan the Barbarian. 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. Howard remains a highly read author, with his best works still reprinted, and is one of the best-selling fantasy writers of all time. Howard's suicide and the circumstances surrounding it have led to speculation about his mental health . His mother had been ill with tuberculosis her entire life, and upon learning she had entered

8428-400: Was " The God in the Bowl ", which went through three drafts and has a slower pace than most Conan stories. This one is a murder mystery filled with corrupt officials and serves as Conan's introduction into civilization, while showing that he is a more decent person than the civilized characters. Before the end of the month, he sent the first two stories to Weird Tales in the same package, with

8526-541: Was an American writer who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He created the character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre. Howard was born and raised in Texas . He spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains , with some time spent in nearby Brownwood . A bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of boxing , eventually taking up amateur boxing, and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding . From

8624-460: Was followed with the beginning of the latter group of Conan stories that "carry the most intellectual punch," starting with " The People of the Black Circle ". Howard probably began to work on the novel in February 1934, starting to write Almuric (a non-Conan, sword and planet science fiction novel) but abandoned it half way. This was followed by another abortive attempt at a novel, this time

8722-470: Was ignored. Howard gave the name of the author simply as "von Junzt" without ever giving his first name. In a letter to Robert Bloch , commenting on Bloch's unpublished story The Madness of Lucian Grey , Lovecraft criticizes him for giving von Junzt the first name of Conrad . Lovecraft claims that he had already named him Friedrich in a story he ghost-wrote for another author on commission. This story has never been identified. The first known appearance of

8820-432: Was inherently corrupt and fragile. This attitude is summed up in his famous line from " Beyond the Black River ": "Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph." Lovecraft held the opposite viewpoint, that civilization was the peak of human achievement and the only way forward. Howard countered by listing many historic abuses of

8918-550: Was inspired by the title "The Feaster from the Stars". Blackmore's story "The Stairs in the Crypt" (not to be confused with Lin Carter's story of the same title) was also inspired by the name of Robert Blake's tale. Lovecraft wrote this tale as a reply to " The Shambler from the Stars " ( 1935 ) by Robert Bloch, in which Bloch kills the Lovecraft-inspired character. Lovecraft returned the favor in this tale, killing off Robert Harrison Blake (aka Robert Bloch). Bloch later wrote

9016-524: Was introduced to The Tattler , the newspaper of the Brownwood High School. It was in this publication that Howard's stories were first printed. The December 1922 issue featured two stories, "'Golden Hope Christmas" and "West is West", which won gold and silver prizes respectively. Howard graduated from high school in May 1923 and moved back to Cross Plains. On his return to his home town he engaged in

9114-556: Was issued by Bridewall in London in 1845 , but (being meant to sell purely based on shock-value) contained numerous misprints and was badly translated . A heavily expurgated (a full quarter of the original material) edition was later issued in New York by Golden Goblin Press in 1909 , but sold few copies as its high production costs made it prohibitively expensive. Original editions in German have

9212-466: Was marketing himself alone. Howard continued to sell directly to Weird Tales , however. Howard wrote one of the first " Weird Western " stories ever created, "The Horror from the Mound", published in the May 1932 issue of Weird Tales . This genre acted as a bridge between his early "weird" stories (a contemporary term for horror and fantasy) and his later straight western tales. The Haunter of

9310-409: Was more formulaic and was accepted by the magazine with no problems. Howard only wrote one more Conan story, "Red Nails", which was influenced both by his personal experiences at the time and an extrapolation of his views on civilization. The character of Conan had a wide and enduring influence among other Weird Tales writers, including C. L. Moore and Fritz Leiber , and over the ensuing decades

9408-465: Was not able to sell the latter's stories. When Farnsworth Wright started a new pulp in 1930 called Oriental Stories , Howard was overjoyed—here was a venue where he could run riot through favorite themes of history and battle and exotic mysticism. During the four years of the magazine's existence, he crafted some of his very best tales, gloomy vignettes of war and rapine in the Middle and Far East during

9506-468: Was otherwise of middling quality and was never published in the author's lifetime, but it is of interest to Howard scholars for the personal information it contains. Howard's alter ego in this novel is Steve Costigan, a name he would use more than once in the future. The novel was finished in 1928, but not published until long after his death. Weird Tales paid on publication, meaning that Howard had no money of his own at this time. To remedy this, he took

9604-466: Was published in the magazine Strange Tales in June 1932. Although the character swears by the god "Crom", that is his only link to the more famous successor character. Going back home he developed the idea, fleshing out a new invented world—his Hyborian Age —and populating it with all manner of countries, peoples, monsters, and magic . Howard loved history and enjoyed writing historical stories. However,

#553446