Novalyne Price Ellis was born on this day (March 9) in 1908. She passed away in 1999 on March 30. Novalyne was the author of One Who Walked Alone, a memoir of her relationship with Robert E. Howard during the last two years of his life. It was based on her diary.
Novalyne Price moved to Cross Plains to teach English in 1934, She soon met Robert E. Howard, and a tempestuous relationship started. They had broken up by the summer of 1936, and Novalyne had left Cross Plains to attend graduate school in Louisiana. She was there when she got the news of Robert’s death.
She wrote One Who Walked Alone as a rebuttal to L. Sprague de Camp’s biography of Howard, Dark Valley Destiny. If you’ve not read her book, you should. It’s one of the main sources of information we have about Bob.
The book was filmed in the mid-1990s and starred Vincent D’Onofrio as Robert and Renee Zellweger as Novalyne.
I did not know about the movie and I feel so bad for not knowing. I am definitely buy the book, though. Thanks, Keith.
I did not know about the movie and I feel so bad for not knowing. I am definitely buying the book, though. Thanks, Keith.
I am having trouble finding a copy of the book. It seems to be out of print everywhere.
I will see if I can track down a copy for you. There may be one available at Howard Days.
Last year I self-published an index to both ONE WHO WALKED ALONE and DAY OF THE STRANGER, which includes some notes on the text – while there are signs of the diary entries being edited, OWWA really is a very frank and accurate book, with many of the events being corroborated by Robert E. Howard’s letters (at that time mostly unpublished) and the local newspaper.
I have that book. Would you mind giving us a link so anyone interested in it could get a copy?
Sure, why not: https://app.box.com/s/r0htevj2pnjql6b3xtkvfgbj17188hz5
Thank you.
One of the (perhaps, the) most extended memoir by anyone who knew Two-Gun Bob. An indispensable primary source. Yes, it is out-of-print and thus probably expensive when you can find a copy.
The movie is certainly worth seeing, but, of course, it is not a primary source.
I think I’ll start bugging my friends at the REH Foundation Press to bring it back into print. Especially if they could add some additional material relevant to the book, such as a short biography of Novalyne or articles from the local paper fleshing out some of the background.