Abstract
The chapter traces the most important steps in the life and work of twentieth-century Texas writer Robert E. Howard (1906–1936). The story leading up to Howard’s suicide is presented chronologically according to two parallel classifications of his biographical and artistic periods, as well as contextualized through examination of his voluminous correspondence, most notably with various members of the Lovecraft circle in the pulp fiction field, his literary writings, and pertinent pieces of Howardian scholarship. In conclusion, a summary of potential sociocultural, philosophical, contextual, and psychological causes and reasons for Robert E. Howard’s self-inflicted death is given.
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Notes
- 1.
The basis of the present essay as such then also fits the area of more psychologically oriented studies of the contemporary author and their suicide in modern literature: “Many writers base their novels and poems on their own experiences, and so their works can be considered autobiographical. This is true, for example, of the novelists Ernest Hemingway and Cesare Pavese and the poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, all of whom died by suicide, and some authors have also written diaries and letters which have been preserved” (Lester, 2021, p. 6, see Chaps. 20 and 23 in this book).
- 2.
This may in fact be a bit of an understatement, as demonstrated by a touching remark from a letter to Lovecraft penned by Isaac Howard a few weeks after his son’s death and relating the circumstances of the suicide: “Lest I worry you with this I will close, but will say in conclusion Mr. Lovecraft, that Robert was a great admirer of you. I have often heard him say that you were the best Weird writter [sic] in the world and he keenly enjoyed corresponding with you. Often expressed hope that you might visit in our home some day, so that he, his mother and I might see and know you personally” (Lovecraft & Howard, 2017, p. 966).
- 3.
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Schwaiger, T. (2023). Two-Gun Bob on the Pyre: Robert E. Howard’s Suicide in the Context of His Life and Work. In: Ros Velasco, J. (eds) The Contemporary Writer and Their Suicide. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28982-8_16
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