Thursday, January 22, 2015

Free Sword and Sorcery Download & Happy Birthday Robert Howard Father of Conan

Happy birthday to Robert Howard the father of modern sword and sorcery and Conan.

Robert Howard's writings have been a part of my life since before I even learned to read. His Conan stories were told to me as part of my bed time stories, later on it was Solomon Kane, and then so many others. Today was his birthday and as I grow older I find myself growing away from Lovecraft and more. 

Professional photograph of Robert E. Howard wearing a hat and suit.
Robert Howard's biography on Wiki: 
Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre.
Howard was born and raised in the state of Texas. He spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains with some time spent in nearby Brownwood. A bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of boxing and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding, eventually taking up amateur boxing. From the age of nine he dreamed of becoming a writer of adventure fiction but did not have real success until he was 23. Thereafter, until his death at the age of 30 by suicide, Howard's writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he had become successful in several genres. Although a Conan novel was nearly published into a book in 1934, his stories never appeared in book form during his lifetime. The main outlet for his stories was in the pulp magazine Weird Tales.
Red bordered magazie cover; the central illustration shows a man holding a supine woman
Howard’s suicide and the circumstances surrounding it have led to varied speculation about his mental health. His mother had been ill with tuberculosis his entire life, and upon learning that she had entered a coma from which she was not expected to wake, he walked out to his car and shot himself in the head. In the pages of the Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales, Howard created Conan the Barbarian, a character whose cultural impact has been compared to such icons as Tarzan, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Batman, and James Bond. With Conan and his other heroes, Howard created the genre now known as sword and sorcery, spawning many imitators and giving him a large influence in the fantasy field. Howard remains a highly read author, with his best works still reprinted.
You can read more right over HERE


Magazine cover showing a hooded man menacing a terrified woman
Free Download of Robert Howard's Works on The Internet Archive
HERE


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