Robert E. Howard
1906–1936
Biography
Robert Ervin Howard (1906–1936) was an American writer from Texas who published fiction in the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. He spent most of his life in Cross Plains, a small town in the state, and it was there that he wrote most of the work that made him known. As a bookish boy he decided he wanted to be an adventure writer. His first real success came when he was about twenty-three, and after that his stories appeared in magazines, journals and newspapers in many kinds of fiction: westerns, boxing stories, historical adventure, horror and crime. He took his own life in 1936, at thirty, while his mother was dying, and his stories were never gathered into books during his lifetime.
His lasting fame rests on Conan the Barbarian, a warrior of a lost age who first appeared in the magazine Weird Tales. Howard gave the character a world of kingdoms, sorcerers and ancient gods, and the Conan stories helped found sword and sorcery, a kind of fantasy that later writers copied for decades. He also created other heroes, among them Kull, Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn, and he wrote horror, historical adventure and Westerns that show a range well beyond his best-known character.
On this site you can read The Hour of the Dragon, the full-length Conan novel. It was printed in magazine instalments in the mid-1930s and reached book form only after Howard's death. The story follows Conan through a plot against his throne that reaches back to a sorcerer of the distant past, and it shows the scale, violence and colour of the world Howard built for him.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
The Hour of the Dragon
by Robert E. Howard
The Hour of the Dragon, also known as Conan the Conqueror, is a fantasy novel by American writer Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian. It was one of the last Conan stories published before Howard's suicide, although not the last to be…
Summary from Wikipedia: The Hour of the Dragon (CC BY-SA 4.0)