The Robert E. Howard Bookshelf

I would like to respectfully and gratefully dedicate this work to the folks who got it all started:

John Bloom

Mrs. Corrine Shields

Dr. Charlotte Laughlin

Glenn Lord

Steve Eng

and to the guys who got ME started on it:

Vernon M. Clark

Steven R. Trout

INTRODUCTION

"When you find an author who really grabs you, read everything he has done.... And then you can go read what he had read. And the world opens up in a way that is consistent with a certain point of view."

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

The following listing is comprised of books, magazines, stories, articles, poetry, manuscripts and dramatizations that Robert E. Howard either may have possessed as part of his library, or that he mentions in his correspondence or stories. The list also includes writers he mentions, whether or not he names a work by them. The listing is intended to assist those who wish to study literary, historical and other influences that may have found their way into Howard's work, and those who may wish to explore for themselves the world that opens up from the reading Robert Howard had done.

This project was originated by Vernon M. Clark and Steven R. Trout, who set out, initially, to acquire all the books listed as part of "Robert E. Howard's Library" in The Dark Barbarian: The Writings of Robert E. Howard, A Critical Anthology (ed. Don Herron; Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984). Glenn Lord provided them with the names of other authors and books mentioned in Howard's letters, and the project began to mushroom. I joined in somewhat later, at first a bit hesitantly, later with real enthusiasm. Vern, Steve and I have each spent, probably, hundreds of hours in used book stores, and added hundreds of titles to our own libraries. I have pored over and over all of Howard's letters (at least all that I am aware of!); I have gone into all his stories, for verse headings, quotations, allusions; I have been through the memoirs of his friends and associates, Tevis Clyde Smith, Novalyne Price Ellis, Harold Preece, and E. Hoffmann Price, to find mentions of writers and works he discussed with them; all in order to make this as encyclopedic a listing of Howard's reading interests as it is possible to recreate. I have logged uncounted hours in the Library of Congress (one of the real perks of living in the Washington area!) and other libraries tracking down information about obscure authors and titles. I have also been assisted immeasurably by my friend Larry Richter, who introduced me to the wonders of Internet book searches (such as the excellent used-book search services, Bibliofind and Advanced Book Exchange), and keeps sending bibliographic information my way.

As much work as we have done, however, our task was made immeasurably easier by the pioneering efforts of Mrs. Corrine Shields, Dr. Charlotte Laughlin, Glenn Lord, and Steve Eng.

In the first issue of Paperback Quarterly, "A Journal For Paperback Collectors" (The Pecan Valley Press [Billy C. Lee], Brownwood, TX, Spring 1978), Dr. Laughlin recounted the events leading up to her publication, beginning with that issue, of "Robert E. Howard's Library: An Annotated Checklist." After first relating Dr. Isaac Howard's donation of his son's library, consisting of "some 300 books, the great majority of which deal [sic] history and biography" (Brownwood Bulletin, 29 June 1936), to Howard Payne College (now University) in Brownwood as the foundation of a Memorial Collection, she writes:

"After the first few years, the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection was forgotten at Howard Payne; and the books were gradually placed on the open shelves for general circulation. It was not until the recent revival of the popularity of Howard's fiction that interest was again shown in separating the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection from the rest of the Howard Payne Library. With the intervention of forty years much has been lost, but what we have been able to reestablish is the result of the work of an enterprising reference librarian.

"When John Bloom, a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald, asked the librarian, Mrs. Corrine Shields, for help in researching an article on Robert E. Howard, she began trying to locate the remnants of his collection. She first checked the shelf lists; but she found that these did not begin until 1948, when the library had stopped keeping accession lists. She then located the old accession lists in a dusty library closet; but since the entries were not dated or alphabetical, she could not determine which books were in the Howard collection. Working from the information in the June 29, 1936, Brownwood Bulletin, she knew that a large part of the collection was history and biography. Mrs. Shields went to the section of the library where biographies are shelved and began to pull books off the shelves to look for the bookplate of 'The Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection.' After several failures, she hit the jackpot with The Saga of Billy the Kid by Walter Noble Burns. On the front pastedown endpaper, was the bookplate and stamped inside the book was the accession number. Armed with this number, she went back to the dusty accession records and found the book listed. She checked the preceding and following books in the accession records and established a list of 268 books which were probably in the original Howard collection. Checking first the card catalog and then the books themselves, Mrs. Shields found that many of the books are no longer in the library and that some which are in the library do not have the bookplate and therefore may be copies obtained from another source.

"Of the 268 books believed to have composed the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection, 45 remain with the bookplate in place. All of these have remnants of a blue slip of paper which was pasted on the back free endpaper. This slip, which is intact in The Saga of Billy the Kid, reads 'THIS BOOK IS FOR USE IN THE LIBRARY.' This evidence indicates that the books were placed originally in a special collection for library use only, as Dr. Howard had wished."

Before Laughlin had finished publication of her article (which ran in four issues), three more books had been located with the bookplate. Later, L. Sprague and Catherine Crook de Camp located a few others, during the course of their research.

Another transcription of the accession listing was made by Glenn Lord, then the agent for the heirs to Robert E. Howard's work, and still the foremost authority on Howard, and circulated with the twelfth mailing (July 1978) of The Hyperborean League, an amateur press association dedicated to Howard and to Clark Ashton Smith. Lord's listing differed from Laughlin's in a few details; the original lists were handwritten in an accession ledger, and contained numerous errors, such as garbled titles, mistranscribed names (in one instance at least, an illustrator was credited as the author of the book), and other indications of haste and carelessness -- to say nothing of simply illegible handwriting. Lord and Laughlin differed in some of their readings.

Steve Eng took Laughlin's and Lord's lists and prepared a revised and significantly improved listing of "Robert E. Howard's Library" for The Dark Barbarian. Steve did yeoman work in libraries to track down information on the authors and titles, and the result must still be considered the standard listing of Howard's library. While the present list corrects some errors in Eng's (most carried over from the earlier ones), and fills in gaps, this listing is not confined to Howard's library alone. For that matter, this listing includes authors whom Howard says he's never read (such as Joseph Conrad)!

While the vast majority of the books originally donated to Howard Payne College by Dr. Howard were presumably owned or read by Robert, some may have belonged to his mother or father, to friends who had loaned them to him, etc. It appears, also, that the cataloging of the Howard collection was often interrupted in order to note other acquisitions: it is hard to imagine, for example, that Robert E. Howard owned two copies of a book titled Curriculum Making in the Elementary School! Eng dropped a number of such titles that had appeared in Laughlin's listing. I have chosen to list them in Appendix Four. While books on pedagogical methods seem unlikely to have interested Howard, it is quite possible that some of the works on nature, such as guides to trees or birds, would be part of an author's research library. And I, personally, wonder whether some of the books on religious subjects which were retained in Eng's listing were indeed Howard's: Howard Payne is a Baptist school.

But with a writer whose interests were as wide-ranging as Howard's, and whose friends attested to his ability to pull a book from the shelf of a library or bookstore and in minutes have read it, with excellent recall, there can never be a "final word" as to what he did or did not read. It is my hope, however, that this listing will at least provide a solid foundation for such speculations, rather than the flimsy suppositions, based on superficial similarities in incident or plot, that have too often passed for "evidence" of "influence" on Howard's work.

I can also personally vouch for another benefit to be gotten from this listing: I have made the acquaintance of a number of writers who would have otherwise remained unknown to me. If this project had introduced me only to Donn Byrne, once a popular writer of Irish romances, now seemingly forgotten, it would have been worth it: Howard doesn't seem to have cared much for Byrne (finding his work "tainted" by his "Orange leanings"), but I have now acquired an almost complete collection of his works. My own library -- and my own life -- have been immeasurably enriched by the acquisition of many of the titles listed here. It is my hope that others will benefit similarly.

"I can say with confidence that no man, however mature, ever loved reading for its own sake more than I. I did not read because of any particular urge for learning, or to merely pass the time, or to escape the realities of life. I read simply because I loved reading for its own sake alone. The printed page was like wine to me."

- Robert E. Howard -

EXPLANATORY NOTES

At the time Robert E. Howard's library was donated to Howard Payne College, the library recorded new accessions in an accounting ledger. The ledger in which the Howard collection was listed appears to have been previously used for accounting purposes -- a few pages have what appear to be expenses posted on the first few lines (one is dated October 1924, and the others are in the same hand). At least two, and possibly three, different hands appear to have been involved in the listing of the Howard books. In the right-hand column is stamped an accession number for each book. For all those books which were listed in the Howard Payne accessions ledger, I have recorded this number following the publication information. The number is followed by initials indicating the previous listings of Robert E. Howard's library in which the title appeared:

"PQ1," "PQ2," "PQ3," and "PQ4" are references to the first through fourth issues, respectively, of Paperback Quarterly, "A Journal For Paperback Collectors" (The Pecan Valley Press [Billy C. Lee], Brownwood, TX) in which Dr. Laughlin's "Robert E. Howard's Library: An Annotated Checklist" first appeared.

"GL" refers to Glenn Lord's listing in The Hyperborean League, Mailing Twelve (July 1978).

"TDB" refers to Steve Eng's "Robert E. Howard's Library," in The Dark Barbarian: The Writings of Robert E. Howard, A Critical Anthology (ed. Don Herron; Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984).

"Still in HPU holdings" indicates items from the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection that are still in the special collection at Howard Payne University Library. The information on these editions is taken directly from the books in that collection.

For those books that are no longer in the Howard Payne library, we cannot know what edition Howard owned: the accessions listing made no note of editions, dates, etc. This is also, of course, true of the works which Howard mentioned in letters or stories but which were not a part of his actual library. I have generally recorded the date of the first edition, when known, with preference given to the first American edition when that information was available. For a number of the books which I have myself acquired, where I am reasonably certain there were not other contemporary editions, I have recorded the information directly from my copy. During Howard's lifetime, however, it was a common practice to issue inexpensive reprints of popular books much sooner after first publication than is the practice in publishing today. In particular, Grosset & Dunlap and A.L. Burt & Co. were publishers of popular reprint fiction, and it seems likely that Howard would have bought these editions, when available. Howard was also a fan of Emmanuel Haldeman-Julius' Little Blue Books, a series of 3½" by 5" paperbound reprints of classic fiction, as well as many non-fiction works, from philosophy to self-improvement. He may have read a number of the works listed herein in those editions.

When Howard mentioned an author or work in his correspondence, this is indicated by reference to the correspondent and date (when known) of the letter, as in "REH to E. Hoffmann Price, 15 February 1936." If the story or author was mentioned in a Howard story, poem, essay, or other work, the title is given. I have chosen to quote matter from the letters directly from photocopies of Howard's typescripts, when available, rather than from later published sources, preserving all typographical errors, misspellings, punctuation, etc. When I do not have a copy of the actual typescript, I have used Glenn Lord's transcripts of these; only as a last resort have I used published versions.

"SL 1" refers to Robert E. Howard: Selected Letters 1923-1930, edited by Glenn Lord (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1989). "SL 2" refers to Robert E. Howard: Selected Letters 1931-1936, edited by Glenn Lord (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1991). The number following the "SL" designation refers to the number assigned to that letter in those volumes.

Howard's friend Tevis Clyde Smith wrote several brief memoirs of REH, in some of which were mentioned books and authors, including "Report on a Writing Man," "Adventurer in Pulp," "Conversation on the Bridge," and "So Far the Poet..." (the last being notes for a planned biography of Howard). All of these were collected in Report on a Writing Man and Other Reminiscences of Robert E. Howard (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1991).

One Who Walked Alone is a memoir by Novalyne Price Ellis (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1986) of her relationship with REH during the final two years of his life, 1934-1936. This memoir was based on journals Mrs. Ellis (then Miss Price) was keeping at the time.

"The Eyrie" was the letters column of Weird Tales. Howard wrote several letters in praise of authors and stories in the magazine.

Of incalculable reference assistance were:

Ashley, Mike. Who's Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction. New York: Tapplinger Publishing Co., 1978.

Barns, Florence Alberta. Texas Writers of Today. Dallas: Tardy Publishing Co., 1935.

Benét, William Rose. The Reader's Encyclopedia. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1965 [2nd edition]. 2 vols.

Bleiler, Richard. The Index to Adventure Magazine. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1990. 2 vols.

Jaffery, Sheldon and Fred Cook. The Collector's Index to Weird Tales. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1985.

Joshi, S.T. H.P. Lovecraft: A Life. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1996.

Joshi, S.T. H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography. Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1981.

Parnell, Frank H. (with Mike Ashley). Monthly Terrors: An Index to the Weird Fantasy Magazines Published in the United States and Great Britain. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Special thanks to Charles Gatlin, David Gentzel, Leo Grin, Patrice Louinet, and Ed Waterman for additions and corrections to this listing.

The Robert E. Howard Bookshelf

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

EXPLANATORY NOTES