Note From Keith: John sent me this review a month ago. I apologize to him for taking so long to get it up. I was busy with school and family things. Since he wrote this review, there have been some other reviews that make the same or similar points. Know that John isn’t cribbing from other reviews. 

I assume if you’re a Howard-fan, you know about this new biography that Dr. Willard Oliver has just produced. (Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author} I just finished my read of it and will give my thoughts on the book, if you’re interested. In full disclosure, I have become good friends with “Will” through our love of Robert E. Howard and Howard Days activities, and also gave some very minor help to Will in his researches for the book, and will do my best to not let any bias show up in my review.

Before this new biography appeared, if you wanted to know anything about Robert E. Howard, you really only had four major biographies to turn to: Dark Valley Destiny by L. Sprague de Camp et al., “A Short Biography of Robert E. Howard,” by Rusty Burke, Blood & Thunder The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, by Mark Finn, and Renegades & Rogues The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard, by Todd Vick. I found each one to be acceptable for some aspect of Howard’s life—Rusty’s was the go-to for a concise bio, Mark’s was great for a better, fuller look at Howard’s life and influences on his writings, Todd’s was most useful for a clear and concise timeline of Howard’s life, and de Camp’s was of interest only to read the interviews of the people that knew Howard and his family while ignoring most of de Camp’s amateur psycho-analyzing and attempts at passive-aggressive character assassination of Howard.

Will Oliver

Now, with Will’s voluminous book, you get the best parts from all four previous biographies with additional new insights and thoughts about Howard and his life by Will and other Howard scholars since those biographies were written. It is now my go-to book for any biographical information and writing information on Howard as it has just about everything I will need or want.

Being an academician, Will has organized the book to follow Howard from his birth to his death. It starts out with an overview of Howard’s parents and their families’ lives before Bob’s birth. The book then follows Bob and his life with fairly detailed information for the remaining 28 chapters and Epilog. Will uses excerpts from Howard’s many letters where he talks about incidents in his life, and what his thoughts were on events and on his writings and career. Will also includes excerpts from Doctor Howard’s later letters on his son’s life and activities, as well as using the interviews the de Camps did of family, friends, neighbors, and others for their book without the inherent slant that the de Camps may have added to their reporting of the events in their biography.

As an aside, I have long hoped for someone to go through the de Camp papers at U.T. Austin and put out a complete, unbiased transcription of the interviews for Howard scholars to be able to use. Will’s book is a good step towards that goal. To give a fuller account of how Howard was viewed by his fans at the time of his writing, Will has even hunted down the fan mail written to Weird Tales praising or criticizing Howard’s stories and has included them wherever possible in the text. The statements by the contemporaries as well as statements and opinions by Howard’s later scholars and biographers are all properly footnoted with a massive endnotes section giving the citation’s information.

Robert E. Howard

So at this point, you may be thinking “That all sounds great, but here’s the big question for you, Mr. Reviewer: is this 470+ page beast of a text easy on the reader? Will a non-academician, non-REH Scholar, average Joe Q. Public person who has a slight interest in learning about Robert E. Howard find the book an interesting, rewarding, easy read?” In answer to that, I will say, in general, “Yes”. Depending on how deep your interest is in learning about Howard, Rusty Burke’s biography is short and hits most of the points you would need to know about Howard to satisfy the average person just wanting a thumbnail knowledge of Howard. However, if you really want to learn as much as you can about what is known about Howard’s life and writings, then this is the book for you. Will’s writing style is not that of your average professor with the big, dry, sleep-inducing sesquipedalian wordage. He keeps it at about high school level, and his constantly using Howard’s own words wherever possible to illustrate his points, as well as the statements by friends and acquaintances, keeps you learning as you read.

During Howard’s writing career years, Will breaks up each year into either one or two chapters, depending on how busy and momentous that year was, covering what happened in his life and his writing. This further helps to make you understand and learn what was going on for Howard. Even after many years of reading and researching Howard, I still was hazy on when he did this or wrote that on some aspects of his life and career. After reading Will’s book, I’m now fairly crystal clear on the chronology of his life and works. I even learned s few things I didn’t know, or had wrong, such as I thought after doing research on where Howard got many of his ideas for some of his horror stories, that the grandmother he credited with telling him the most hair-raising stories of horror and the supernatural was his maternal grandmother. Will provides enough information to have made me change my mind that it was  his paternal grandmother, as Will states.

I find that the biggest “a-HA!” I got from the book was Will’s opinion that the most important and controlling idea that drove Howard in his life was his overwhelming desire to be free to live his life as he wanted, leading to his desire to become a writer to do this. While I may have known that in the past, this book finally made me understand how important this was to Howard. Will also shows through the book that, sadly, Howard was unable to fully achieve his dreams by choosing to be a pulp writer which required him to be constantly working to make a living at it. And, sadly, how his family situation also affected him so that he felt a duty to care for his mother as her health declined, which added to his being locked into a role of not be able to be free, but constantly either working or caring for his mother. Will’s final thoughts on how this all may have led Howard to finally decide his only path out was suicide are also thought-provoking and have led me to re-examine my own beliefs on Howard.

So, in summation, if you are a Howardophile, or have any interest in learning about Robert E. Howard’s life and writings, get this book. You will come away with a deep understanding and knowledge of the man, his life and work.

John Bullard is a retired attorney, Robert E. Howard scholar, and editor of the Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard.