Wolfshead and Other Stories

By Robert E. Howard and Alex Magnos

Wolfshead and Other Stories collects the first tales written by the master of dark fantasy and weird fiction, this volume puts together the early tales and novelettes written by the creator of Conan of Cimmeria, Kull of Atlantis, Bran Mak Morn, and Solomon Kane originally published by Weird Tales between 1925 and 1928.

 

Collecting In the Forest of Villefère and Wolfshead presenting the dark saga of the tormented De Montour, this volume also features Spear and Fang, which marks Robert E. Howard's debut as a professional writer, and The Lost Race, featuring the clash between the decadent race of the Picts — centuries after their legendary leader Bran — against the Britons in a gloomy past, and also The Dream Snake, The Hyena, Sea Curse and in addition to these tales, this volume also includes some poems published by the "unique magazine" such as The Song of the Bats, The Ride of Falume, The Riders of Babylon, Remembrance and The Gates of Nineveh, closing the first cycle of strange fiction tales from the up-and-coming Texan writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Dragon Publisher
• Release date: Aug 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201336714

Robert E. Howard

Born Robert Ervin Howard, in the United States, on January 22, 1906, and died in June 11, 1936. The only child of a traveling physician, Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard, and Mrs. Hester Jane Ervin Howard, was a prolific American writer who worked primarily as a short story writer and poet. In his professional life, Howard flirted with several genres, mainly those linked to fantasy and fiction. A constant contributor to pulp fiction magazines, very popular in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the writer is currently best known for his authorship of the character Conan the Barbarian, as well as for being historically considered the “father” of the sword and sorcery subgenre. He wrote stories in many styles but his most famous creations are in the sword and sorcery genre — a fantasy genre characterized by its emphasis on violent combat and supernatural interventions (gods, monsters, wizards, etc.). Howard created one of the most popular fantasy characters of all time; Conan, who made his debut in the short story The Phoenix on the Sword in December 1932. To host his creation Howard invented the Hyborian Age, which is about Earth itself but in a pre-cataclysmic past from which current history holds no memories. Other famous characters include King Kull, the Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane, and Pictish king Bran Mak Morn. He also created the female warriors Dark Agnes de la Fere and Red Sonya de Rogatino, the latter served as the basis for Roy Thomas to create the character Red Sonja for the Conan comics at Marvel Comics. With Conan and his other heroes, Howard created the genre that would come to be known as "Sword and Sorcery" between the 1920s and 1930s. His work spawned several imitators, making Howard one of the great influencers in the fantasy genre, only rivaling J.R.R. Tolkien. Another field in which Howard was successful was supernatural horror, in which he borrowed many ideas from his correspondent and friend H. P. Lovecraft, and always added his trademark of fast-paced action and flashy characters.

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Foreword

Robert Ervin Howard or Robert E. Howard, as he became known professionally around the world, or Bob Howard, as he was called by his friends, was born on January 22, 1906 in Peaster, a small town located in Parker County, Texas. He was the son of Isaac Mordecai Howard (1871 - 1944) and Hester Jane Howard, born Ervin (1870 - 1936). His mother, Hester Jane, was the daughter of George W. Ervin, an energetic man who led a life full of ups and downs. The Ervin family was able to recover from the blow that the Civil War had dealt to many southern American families and rise to affluence, thanks to G. W. Ervin's bold entrepreneurial sagacity. Thus, with the support of resources resulting from her father's achievements, Hester Jane spent her time traveling, visiting friends and relatives, having fun and living her life. As a lover of literature, and especially poetry, she always liked to spend time in the company of those equally well-refined. It was during this time that she found herself unexpectedly under the spell of a penniless country doctor. His name was Isaac Mordecai Howard.

The Howard family was originally from Arkansas, where they had resided until 1885, then moved to Texas. Unlike his brothers who were happy to accept the fact that they were going down the path of a modest life in agriculture, Isaac Howard had other ambitions. He wanted to be a doctor, so he sold his share of the family estate to fund his medical training. Texas at that time had no serious legislation to regulate the practice of medicine; thus, the interested party was only required to appear before a commission that would judge whether the candidate was sufficiently qualified, or not, to perform such a function, and this evaluation process was repeated every time the doctor moved to another location.

Isaac Howard began practicing medicine in 1899, before moving to North Texas, always choosing small and even minuscule locations to offer his skills as long as such locations could demonstrate some potential as a future railroad station, mining, business. oil plants, new roads and the like; and these choices would consequently have a strong impact on his future child. Hester Jane and Isaac Howard had practically nothing in common. They came from entirely different worlds—she from a rich family and he from a poor background. But some argue that perhaps she gave in to Isaac's advances and allowed herself to be seduced by his temper, energy and ambition, qualities that were very similar to her own father's. Be that as it may, they were married on January 12, 1904, and in 1906, a few months after they had settled in Peaster, Robert, the couple's only child, was born. Sometime later, the family moved to a tiny place called Dark Valley, which would leave a lasting impression on the future writer, as he himself would reveal years later. But since the Howard family moved from Dark Valley when Robert was just two years old, the reminiscences he claimed to have from the early days of his life must certainly be much better appreciated from a psychological rather than a biographical point of view.

In subsequent years, the Howard family continued to move frequently, though always staying in Texas, and always staying between weeks to a few months in new residences, likely as a consequence of Isaac Howard's ill-fated search for his next dreamland. It was also around this time, 1907, that licensing legislation for the practice of medicine in Texas changed, making it mandatory for practitioners to participate in actual medical training. And already anticipating such a change, Isaac Howard had enrolled at Gate City Medical College in September 1904, receiving his graduation in May 1905. However, a few years later, it was revealed that Gate City Medical College was a fraud, not passing from a diploma factory, where most of its students took the distance courses and received their diplomas in the mail at the cost of 50 dollars.

After a moving odyssey between Bagwall, Cross Cut, Burkett, in 1919, Isaac Howard finally took his family to Cross Plains in Callahan County. After several years of wandering, the Howard family was putting down roots. Robert was fondly remembered years later by his friends and acquaintances from that period, impressed by his vivid imagination and avid readership. In his book The Robert E. Howard Guide, Patrice Louinet, brings us the memories of a Burkett post office employee when some day she found young Howard who was playing in the fields with his dog and the encounter left her such a lasting impression indeed that she would remember years later, demonstrating the innate aspirations in the future bard:  "Absorbed in reading we are unaware of any ap- proach until a big black and white dog wearing a collar bounds down from a ledge of rock behind, startling us.... Almost immediately a call ‘Come Patches, come Patches’ is heard and looking up in the direction of the voice we see a lad of about ten years crossing a fence nearby.... His master approaches our position and politely announces, ‘I’m Robert Howard, I am sorry if we frightened you. Patches and I are out for our morning stroll. We like to come here where there are big rocks and caves so we can play make believe. Someday I’m going to be an author and write stories about pirates and maybe cannibals. Would you like to read them?"

In 1918, on the occasion of one of Isaac's medical courses, the Howard family had to spend some time in New Orleans, which was already a bustling metropolis of two hundred thousand inhabitants. The experience came as a shock to young Robert, who had always lived in very small communities, lost in the depths of Texas. Gigantic and cosmopolitan in the eyes of the young man, the city would be marked in Robert's mind, so much so that years later, he still had good memories of the old maids of French origin, of the house where they had stayed; of a Sicilian immigrant who sold oysters; of a disquieting Black-Asian mulatto; of the exotic and unknown flavors and smells of the city. He had finally discovered civilization and along with it, its opposite, in the form of the most elementary savages: the Picts.

As an insatiable reader, Robert spent much of his time in a library. It was there that he found a book talking about the early days of Great Britain and it was in the pages of this book that the young man was amazed to discover about the Pictish tribes, among them, specifically one named Brân, and there was born a fascination for those people who would accompany the future writer for life. In New Orleans, young Robert received another gift that would also mark him forever: the fact occurred in the summer of 1921, when young Robert discovered the world of the pulps when he found a copy of Adventure, which was, along with Argosy, the most prestigious magazine in the pulp literature universe at the time, where you could read the stories of all the main writers of the genre, such as Rafael Sabatini, Harold Lamb, Talbot Mundy and others. His vocation to become a writer really got a definite boost at that point, and the young Texan immediately began doodling his first short stories to send to Adventure. However, his first efforts were not graced with the success that he, a boy of only fifteen, had delusionally hoped for. But his early disappointments didn't make him give up, and he scribbled dozens and dozens of stories, many of which were abandoned without ever receiving a conclusion.

Obviously he was creating his stories in the heat of the moment, not only for the sheer joy of writing, but also and still, for the influence he received from reading Adventure and Argosy that presented him with tales of braggarts, historical fiction and horror adventures. It was at this moment that young Robert gave life to his first heroes: Bran Mak Morn (reflecting his fascination towards the Picts he had recently discovered), Frank Gordon (aka El Borak, who reflected another interest of the young bard: the mysterious East), Steve Allison (the Sonora Kid), Steve Bender, and others. It is important to point out that other writings, shall we say, more restrained, were published in the school and in the Cross Plains and Brownwood newspapers, but these were not professionals and therefore were not paid.

But in March 1923, the first issue of Weird Tales hit newsstands, which was the first magazine of its kind to fully dedicate itself to the stories of the strange, the supernatural and the unusual. This event was destined to change everything for young Howard. Now legendary in its own right, Weird Tales was, for most of its long existence, a second-rate publication, often on the brink of cancellation, with financial problems that never seemed to be resolved. A fact that Howard discovered very early on, but while it is possible to detect, and often trace, the borrowings that young Howard made from his reading of Adventure, Argosy, and the classics of adventure fiction, and apply to his own writing, none of the stories published in the early years of Weird Tales seem to have influenced him however minor. Although, in the fall of 1924, young Robert submitted a story to Weird Tales: it was Spear and Fang, which he had written in October. The narrative took place during prehistoric times and contained no strange elements or any kind of supernatural atmosphere, yet the story pleased the magazine's new editor, Farnsworth Wright, who bought it for 15 or 16 dollars (depending on the source), and spurred on by that first sale of his work, young Howard flooded the Weird Tales office with his stories, but he still