Person

Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American writer and one of the founders of sword and sorcery, giving fantasy a fierce new energy of barbarian heroism, dark magic, and ancient kingdoms. In the Conan the Cimmerian stories, he created a hero written with raw force, speed, and a brooding sense of a world where civilization often seems more fragile than the sword in an exile’s hand. His work includes stories and poems across fantasy, horror, westerns, historical adventure, and detective fiction, most of it published in pulp magazines. Although his heroes seem unbreakable and forever in motion, Howard himself spent most of his life in Cross Plains, Texas, and struggled with loneliness and a deeply sensitive nature. From a small town, he summoned whole lost ages — as if imagination were both an escape route and a battlefield.