From his writing desk in the small town of Cross Plains, Texas Robert E. Howard spun stories that readers today continue to devour and wish for more of. From all of his writings, one character has stood out and become a pop culture icon, Conan the Cimmerian, more popularly referred to as Conan the Barbarian.
The question many ponder is how Howard managed to invent the genre of sword-and-sorcery and conjure the stories of Conan, Kull and others while living in isolated rural Texas. Scholars postulate that Howard was channeling the stories of Texas and the rough men of the boom-bust oil patches into his fiction.
Howard’s life in Texas had a deep influence on his writing, shaping not only his settings and characters but also the tone, themes, and worldview that permeate his body of work. Growing up in the raw, violent, and often isolated communities of early 20th-century Texas gave Howard both the material and the mindset that fueled his legendary pulp stories.
Howard was born in Peaster, Texas in 1906 and spent most of his life in small oil boomtowns like Cross Plains, which were often violent, lawless, and filled with transient workers, rough necks, scallywags, drifters and women of ill repute. Also this frontier environment directly inspired the gritty, survivalist settings of his Westerns and fantasy tales. The tough, struggling towns of Texas mirror the barbaric cities and wild frontiers of Conan’s Hyborian Age.
Simultaneously Howard was witness to a failing economy and grim hardships brought on by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The two local banks of Cross Plains failed and could only pay out two cents on the dollar to his neighbors who lost their life's savings. He questioned if civil society and civilization was man’s natural state and instead he saw the freedom of barbarianism was more honest and honorable. He saw firsthand how civilization could collapse overnight, fueling his recurring theme: civilization is fragile, barbarism is eternal.
Living in rural Texas left Howard socially isolated. He was introspective, moody, and intensely imaginative—traits that pushed him toward writing early. He often felt out of place and misunderstood, which resonates in characters like Kull and Bran Mak Morn, loners who carry the weight of history or fate on their shoulders.
Texas culture—especially in Howard’s day—was steeped in tall tales, campfire stories, and outlaw legends. He was surrounded by stories of Comanche raids, cattle drives, feuds, and gunfights—all of which fed his fascination with honor, blood, and frontier justice. These influences are especially clear in his Breckinridge Elkins and Pike Bearfield stories—humorous but brutal Western tales.
The rugged, independent, anti-authority attitude of West Texas seeped into his writing. His heroes—Conan, Kane, El Borak—reject kings, laws, and empires, relying on their own strength and judgment. This mirrors the self-reliant cowboy ethos Howard saw around him.
Howard’s pulp fiction stories continue to be extremely influential—especially in the genres of fantasy, sword and sorcery, and horror. His legacy continues to have a lasting impact.
Howard's imagined worlds were gritty, violent, sensual, and individualistic. It emphasized action, brawn, independence, personal glory and a critical view of civilization, organized religion and law.
Willard M. Oliver’s new book Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author details the many challenges Howard faced as he became a full-time pulp fiction writer while dealing with an aging father and caring for a mother who was dying of tuberculosis. The book both chronicles his personal life and demonstrates how the one driving force in Robert E. Howard’s life—forming the foundation for all of his characters and stories—was his personal pursuit of freedom. And also what led to Howard’s death by his own hand at the age of 30.
