[Part 4 is here]

As 1954 began, Oscar Friend was thinking of ways to continue the Conan series. He wrote to P. M. Kukendall on February 19, 1954 and explained his plan:

While there are still two more Conan books to be published by Gnome Press, the end of the Howard material is in sight. However, we think the Conan property too valuable to let die, and we have conferred with the book publisher and have found him keenly desirous of carrying on the series. Therefore, we have been looking around for a suitable author-fan of Bob Howard’s capable of carrying on. We have two or three in mind, but before we can approach any of them with a concrete proposition, we must have an understanding with you as administrator of the Howard Estate.

Friend goes on to describe various scenarios, what the new author will be responsible for, what kind of byline to append to the new stories, etc. He closes by saying that “There is no great hurry about this,” but thinks “the idea a very good one, but if you don’t like it, just say so, and we’ll drop the matter.”

Kuykendall responded on March 8: “We are perfectly agreeable to your working out a by-line deal for the continuation of the Howard publication series.” But there were other things on his mind, too, like getting rid of the whole thing:

We would prefer selling all rights, and releasing the entire thing to you or to a purchaser whom you think might be interested. We would consider a sale price of three thousand dollars for all rights, and a complete release of any claim to future royalties that might accrue.

The above letter, and the two that follow, appear in The Collected Letters of Doctor Isaac M. Howard, and show Friend explaining what he thinks the ups and downs of such a sale would entail, as well as the amount of cash that the property might be expected to generate. Friend’s March 14 letter has a counter-offer of $1,250. This is rejected by Kuykendall on March 23.

Meanwhile, over at Gnome Press, series editor John D. Clark had stepped aside—under what circumstances is not known—and his place filled by L. Sprague de Camp. His first Gnome Press book was 1954’s Conan the Barbarian. The only other Howard for 1954 was a reprint of “The Dark Man” in the September Weird Tales.

After thinking about the Kuykendalls’ offer all year, Oscar Friend made another counter-offer on December 8, 1954. He upped his bid to $2,000, to be paid in $500 quarterly installments dependent on sales of the property. If he couldn’t make his payment, the property would revert back to Kuykendall. This letter went unanswered, causing Friend to send a short note to Kuykendall on January 26, 1955: “It is important that you answer my letter of Dec. 8, or notify me at once that you have failed to receive same, asking for a carbon copy.”

On January 26, 1955, the Kuykendalls’ attorney responded, saying that they would accept the proposed deal that continued the Conan series, but no mention is made of Friend’s $2,000 offer on the entire Howard property. The letter concludes by saying that Doctor Kuykendall has been ill and that Friend should direct his correspondence to the attorney.

Friend wrote back on February 18: “I will send you a draft of the contract as soon as I have prepared one. The hiatus at the present moment is that the author I thought I had lined up has decided against doing the work, and I have to line up another.” Who that author was is not mentioned.

One writer who was busy with Conan was L. Sprague de Camp. After borrowing a few non-Conan stories from the Kline files, he set about converting them into Hyborian Age tales. And while Oscar Friend was wrestling with contract details for the continuation of the Conan series, de Camp was actually doing it. In a June 9, 1955 letter to Kuykendall, Friend sends “a small lump of sugar” for “‘Hawks Over Shem,’ a re-write of an old R. L. [sic.] Howard dud.” The story appeared in the October 1955 issue of Fantastic Universe. This yarn was originally an REH historical entitled “Hawks Over Egypt.” The rewrite also appeared in that year’s Tales of Conan (the proper story with the proper title didn’t appear in print until 1979).

By November 14, 1955, Friend, de Camp, and Gnome Press had at least agreed on what to do with the conversion of Howard’s non-Conan stories into Conan yarns. On that day, Friend wrote to Kuykendall, including new contracts with Gnome Press and a “special” contract for de Camp for the “ghost writing of Robert Howard stories.” Friend advises Kukendall to go over the contracts and, “if agreeable,” sign and return them, but also says, “If you feel that de Camp is crowding on his percentages, etc., delete and initial any such changes you may make.” Friend feels the terms of the de Camp contract aren’t “too onerous.”

Kuykendall’s attorney responded on November 19:

Frankly we know nothing about the intricate procedure involved but assume that you will protect Dr. Kuykendall as far as possible and get for him the best deal under all of the circumstances. He would like to keep the matter on a royalty basis, but will leave the details to you. If you will add or change the contract to your satisfaction as agent for the estate of Robert Howard and its successors, Dr. Kuykendall will go along in keeping with your judgment.

And there the deal stood.

The December 1955 issue of Fantastic Universe has the second of de Camp’s rewrites: “Conan, Man of Destiny.” Originally an historical entitled “The Road of the Eagles,” for its book publication in that year’s Tales of Conan de Camp used the original Howard title (the proper story with the proper title didn’t appear in print until 2005). De Camp, it seemed, was going to be the Conan continuer, whether Friend admitted it or not.

In his new role as “posthumous collaborator,” de Camp was a mixed bag. Back in the September 1952 Space Science Fiction, de Camp had outlined his contribution to the recently found Conan tale, “The God in the Bowl”:

In reworking this tale I have retained the original storyline without change. My alterations comprise: (1) Changing the names of characters where these names too closely resembles each other or those of other characters in the Conan series. (Howard was incorrigibly careless in such matters.) (2) Condensing the dialogue which, especially in the early part of the story, got out of hand. (3) Correcting many minor infelicities and modifying the style, which in places approached that of a contemporary whodunnit, for greater consistency with the other Conan stories.

His editorial policy was likely the same for his reworking of the other two Conan tales found in the Kline files: “The Black Stranger” and “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter.” In his “Ghostly Note” (Tales of Conan, 1955), de Camp explains his approach to the non-Conan stories:

These four stories are based upon unpublished manuscripts by Robert E. Howard, which I obtained from the same source as the three posthumously published Conan stories that have appeared in the Gnome Press’s series of Hyborian Age books. (See my introduction to King Conan.) In their original form, the stories in the present book were tales of oriental adventure with medieval and modern settings. Converting them into Conan stories involved changing names, removing anachronisms, and putting in a supernatural element, but the stories are still about four-fifths Howard. The resulting pastiches are meant to be as close as possible to what Howard would have written had he, instead of blowing his silly head off, undertaken to rewrite these stories in this form. His literary habits being what they were, he might very well have done this had he lived.

De Camp’s “silly head” comment notwithstanding, he appears to have truly appreciated Howard’s tales of Conan, if not necessarily the author that created them. And while he enjoyed the stories, he didn’t see them as much more than “pure entertainment,” adding that

These stories prove a theory expounded by Bernard De Voto, that the absolute essential for fiction-writing is neither keen observation, warm human sympathy, painstaking research, nor technical writing-skill, useful though all these undoubtedly be. It is instead the ability to visualize one’s settings, characters, and events so vividly and intensely that the reader is forced to share in this act of imagination whether he wishes to or not. This quality Howard had, so that, however implausible his Hyborian Age may seem when coldly analyzed, it comes to gorgeous and furious life on his pages.

So, if you read for fun and excitement (and why shouldn’t you?) turn to these stories and plunge in. As you can see, I am not utterly uncritical in my appreciation of Howard’s stories. But, even though I can point out a fault here and there, I have read all of the damned things at least four times! And that’s what counts. (King Conan)

The appearance of “new” Howard stories had a different effect on editor Lester Del Rey. In his magazines that carried these tales, he said that Howard was one of the world’s “greatest fantasy adventure writers” (Space Science Fiction, Sept. 1952), and Del Rey was especially pleased that these new yarns were Conan stories:

We’ve always been fond of Conan, and when Howard died over fifteen years ago, our lives were just a bit poorer for it. It was quite an event to discover that a full novelette by him had never been published, and we finally got it. It isn’t the sort of a tale you’ll usually find in this magazine—because nobody else can quite recapture the pre-mythical past. (Fantasy Magazine, Feb. 1953)

In that same editorial, De Rey said that “nobody else can write quite like Robert E. Howard.” These comments about the author of the Conan series differ starkly from de Camp’s “silly head” remark above and this, from his King Conan introduction:

Howard was a psychological case-study. In Conan he created a wishful idealization of himself; Conan even looked like his creator on a slightly larger scale. Howard suffered from delusions of persecution, and his end constituted a classic case of Oedipus complex.

While de Camp was becoming the voice on all things Conan (and at the time, that meant all things Howard), the stage was being set for a new voice to emerge: Glenn Lord had returned from the Korean War.

1604 — Kane is now fifty. He still has steely muscles, great endurance and remarkable strength. He’s still a superb swordsman. His appearance has hardly altered, except for grey strands in his lank black hair. There was always something timeless and ineluctable about Solomon Kane. At twenty-five, with his strange dark pallor and fanatical assurance, he seemed older, and now, having reached the half-century mark, he looks younger.

He travels eastward into Russia with members of the English merchant body, the Muscovy Company. He knows nothing about the land before him. He has vaguely heard of Russia’s barbarities, and of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, but Ivan has been dead twenty years. The present Tsar is Boris Godunov, who almost certainly had Ivan’s heir Dimitri killed at the age of ten before seizing power. His health is failing now. Godunov has encouraged the English to trade with Moscow; they are exempt from duties there. What will happen when he dies is difficult to guess.

Russia has just suffered a terrible famine which slew one-third of its population. Riots, revolt and cannibalism have marked its course.

In March the impostor Dimitri visits the Polish royal court and gains an audience with King Sigismund III. He converts to Catholicism to gain Jesuit and Polish support. Certain great Polish nobles give him 3500 soldiers from their armies, and he leads them onto Russian soil in June. Enemies of Boris Godunov join False Dimitri in his advance on Moscow. They win one battle and capture Chernigov.

1605 — Tsar Boris Godunov dies suddenly on the 13th of April. His son Fyodor becomes Tsar – briefly. The impostor Dimitri, who claims to be the lost heir of Ivan the Terrible, had been losing battles and support when Godunov died, but now his cause revives. Many Russian nobles and soldiers turn to his side. On June 1st Moscow nobles (boyars) make the newly-crowned Tsar Fyodor and his mother prisoners.

While this is happening, Kane finds that the magician whose bones he saw in the Black Forest was not the only evil magician Russia had to offer. Abbot Mikhail Stribog of the Golden Monastery on the outskirts of Moscow is another. He has powers that can make brave men tremble, and he hates alien influence such as that of the English merchants. But then he comes up against Kane and the staff of Solomon.

1605 — Dimitri the impostor (False Dimitri I – who is really Grigori Otrepiev, a “razstriga” or unfrocked monk) orders Fyodor and his mother murdered. This is done. Probably the boyars would have killed them even if Dimitri hadn’t given the word.

In Moscow, Dimitri is crowned Tsar on 21st July. He has confined the Tsarevna Xenia in the palace, raped her and made her his concubine. She is the only surviving member of the Godunov family now, and will probably die when Dimitri tires of her. Kane, a compulsive knight-errant, determines to rescue her, and the one way to effect that is to kill the impostor Tsar.

1606 — The impostor makes his worst mistake when he seeks an alliance with Poland-Lithuania and with the Pope. The devout Orthodox Russians suspect Dimitri will seek to make Russia a Catholic country like Poland. The treacherous boyar Shuiski, who had helped put False Dimitri on the throne, now conspires against him. False Dimitri marries a Polish noblewoman, Marina Mniszech, on the 6th of May. Seasoned fighting men, Kane among them, storm his apartments in the Kremlin on the 17th. The young villain meets them with pistols and a sabre. He wounds Kane, who seizes him and hurls him through a window into a courtyard. A conspirator with a musket fires, killing him. Xenia is saved and Vasili Shuiski becomes the new Tsar.

Kane travels south. He’s disillusioned with Polish, Lithuanian and Russian politics. He concludes that all these countries are as savage as Africa, with less excuse. A Russian merchant gives him passage down the Dneiper to the Crimean Khanate. The merchant has discovered that Kane is the same Suleiman Kahani who scarred the face of Kemal Bey in a sea-fight twenty-five years before. Kemal Bey is now Kemal Pasha, a great man in Egypt, and would be pleased to have Kane in his power. The merchant drugs Kane, who wakes in shackles.

1607 — Kane is taken to Egypt. In Alexandria he is brought face to face with Kemal Pasha. The scar-faced Turk has given much thought to Kane’s fate. Flaying, ganching and other Ottoman amusements all have their points, but he decides in the end to have Kane dismembered and his raw amputations cauterized with red-hot iron, for as long as he can survive the process. He allows Kane three days to think about what is coming.

An Arab he does not know comes to Kane’s dungeon on the first of those days. He tells Kane that he is Asad, a brother of Yussef the Hadji that Kane met twelve years before (“The Footfalls Within”). Asad doubted Yussef’s story aforetime, but now he believes it, having seen both Kane and the ancient staff he carries. Asad returns the staff to Kane and helps him escape on the dhow of a nephew who plies the Red and Arabian Seas. He’s now bound on a trading voyage down the east coast of Africa. The Portuguese claim that as their particular domain in these times, which does not impress the nephew. His people were trading in that region before any Portuguese knew it existed. “Shaitan devour them!” he says cheerfully.

Kane reflects that his fate by the inscrutable will of God seems joined to Africa. He feels considerable gratitude to Asad and his nephew. Strong-hearted as Kane is, he was not looking forward to the death Kemal intended for him.

1608 – The nephew’s ship is wrecked on the east coast of Madagascar. This is decades before the island becomes a pirate haven for freebooters. Kane crosses the island from east to west in a series of involvements with the Malagasy tribes’ wars. On the western coast they fall in with an Arab trader, and cross the Mozambique Channel in his vessel. The nephew and his surviving crewmen go home; Kane is set ashore by his own request near a Portuguese trading post.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Part 3 is here.]

When Oscar Friend discovered Robert E. Howard’s “The House of Arabu” in the Kline Agency files and “reworked” it for Donald Wollheim’s Avon Fantasy Reader, he changed the course of Howard publishing history. Wollheim received the rewrite in the spring of 1951 and later discussed the new Howard tale with Lyon Sprague de Camp. In his introduction to King Conan, de Camp describes the scene:

I was talking on the telephone with Donald A. Wollheim, then an editor for Avon Publications. He mentioned a theretofore unpublished story by Robert E. Howard, of which the original title was “The House of Arabu” but which later appeared in Avon Fantasy Reader No. 18 as “The Witch from Hell’s Kitchen.” And I asked Wollheim if any more like it existed.
“Yes,” he said. “I understand Howard’s agent has a whole pile of unpublished Howard manuscripts.”
“What! Who’s his agent?”
“Oscar J. Friend. Do you know him?”
“Sure I know Oscar! Thanks; g’bye!”
I called Jackson Heights and presently heard Oscar’s rich southern accents.
“Why, yes,” he said. “I’ve got a whole carton full of Howard manuscripts. They were left with Otis Kline, who was Howard’s agent, when Howard died, and Otis left ’em to me when he died. Might even be some unpublished Conan stories among ’em. Why, would you like to look through ’em?”
“You bet I would!”
So on November 30th, 1951, I went to Oscar Friend’s apartment [. . .]

Once there, de Camp met Harold Preece and was allowed to go through the surviving Howard material:

Oscar had hauled out the carton of manuscripts—about twenty pounds of them. Most were outside the field of imaginative fiction in which Howard is mainly remembered. There were sports stories, westerns, detective stories, and oriental adventure tales on the Harold Lamb-Talbot Mundy model. There was an unpublished Solomon Kane story, unlike the others non-fantastic—all swordplay. There was the story which had been announced for the April 1933 Strange Tales, under the title of “The Valley of the Lost,” but which never appeared because of that magazine’s demise. And there were three unpublished Conan stories.

These stories were “The Black Stranger,” “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,” and “The God in the Bowl.” After examining these stories, de Camp says, “It was agreed that I should rewrite these stories—not, however, to turn them into typical de Camp pieces, but to create as nearly as possible what Howard would have produced if in his later years he had undertaken to rewrite them himself with all the care he could manage.”

By the spring of 1952, de Camp had completed his first revision and placed the story with Space Science Fiction. In a July 2, 1952 letter to Kuykendall, Oscar Friend reported the news and sent a check, saying the money was “for one of the old manuscripts of Robert E. Howard which was worked over. It is called ‘The God in the Bowl,’ and is a Conan the Barbarian yarn which I had L. Sprague de Camp revise. The story will, of course, later go into the complete collection of Conan books being published slowly by Gnome Press. There is another volume (Number two) to the set that is out now—The Sword of Conan.”

“The God in the Bowl” appeared in the September 1952 issue of Space Science Fiction. At the end of that month, September 29, Friend wrote to Gnome Press publisher Martin Greenberg, explaining that the agency was “taking over the subsidiary sales of the first book—Conan the Conqueror.” Friend tells Greenberg that he is “trying to cook up an equitable deal in the British market and, if I do so, I shall consummate said deal as between Otis Kline Assc. and the publisher, rather than between Gnome Press and the publisher.”

On December 24, 1952, Friend sent Kuykendall “another small check to help your hospital work there in Ranger,” and informed the doctor that he had “sold one-time magazine reprint rights to ‘Worms of the Earth,’ R. E. Howard, to Popular Pubs.” The story appeared in the June 1953 Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

In a February 19, 1953 letter, Friend Tells Kuykendall that the Gnome books “should sell for years. The third book in the series, King Conan, is being readied for the press now and should be out sometime this spring.” Also that spring, “The Black Stranger,” de Camp’s second reworking of a Howard Conan yarn,  appeared in the March 1953 issue of Fantasy Fiction Magazine; the August 1953 issue has “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,” the last of three Conan tales found in the Kline files.

Due to the publication of “new” Howard material, Friend started receiving requests from Howard fans, like this one, dated February 23, 1953:

I understand that you are the sole possessor of the unpublished manuscripts of Robert E. Howard. I have been reading Howard since 1932 and wonder if it would be possible for me to have one of these manuscripts. I would be willing to pay any reasonable charge you ask.

On April 7, 1953, Friend sent Kuykendall payment for “The Black Stranger” (retitled by de Camp “The Treasure of Tranicos”), telling him that it was for “a revised Robert Howard manuscript into a Conan story which we have sold to Space Pubs.” He goes on to say that “this oldie [. . .] will later be included in one of the Conan books.” The primary reason for this letter, though, appears to be that Friend is looking for more Howard material. He had apparently received no reply to his prior request (See part 3, July 13, 1951) and again asked Kuykendall to look around:

I would like to know if you know of any Robert Howard manuscripts existing in anybody’s possession at this time. For instance, Otis Kline went carefully through all Howard MSS he could find, and which Dr. Howard sent him in the late 1930s, but do you think you could possibly find any strays anywhere for us? For instance, Robert Howard studied for a time at Howard Payne College there in Texas and is reputed to have left the college some of his manuscripts as a sort of legacy. Do you know, or can you learn if this is true? If so, can you procure a list of the scripts for me?

Friend ends his letter with an idea that would haunt Howard studies to the present day: “Meantime, after we have exhausted all sources of the Conan stories, I am contemplating the carrying on of the Conan series with brand new material.” This idea occurred at the same time that L. Sprague de Camp was becoming more involved with the publication of the Gnome Press series. Introductory material by de Camp appears in both of the Gnome volumes published in 1953: King Conan and The Coming of Conan.

And that wasn’t the only Conan publishing that year. ACE Books came out with one of its paperback doubles containing Conan the Conqueror on one side and Leigh Bracket’s The Sword of Rhiannon on the other. In a June 24, 1953 letter, Friend discusses this publication, but is more interested in unpublished Howard material:

You never did answer my letter regarding the possibility of Bob Howard having left any original MSS to his college, or if you know of any unpublished material of his anywhere. Please do. I am scraping the bottom of the barrel now in having some of Bob’s early scripts which are not even Conan material re-written into Conan stories [. . .]

On July 1, 1953, Friend wrote again:

Pursuant to our recent inquiry of you as to any other extant manuscripts of Robert E. Howard, I know ask you if you can possibly scare up for us a fairly good photo of Bob. The publisher of the Conan books would like very much to print a picture of Robert Howard in the forthcoming volume [. . .]

Kuykendall finally replied on July 13: “I have searched through all of the very meager records that Doctor Howard left and I am unable to find any pictures at all of Robert Howard.” Regarding the unpublished Howard material Friend had been asking for, Kuykendall said this:

When Doctor Howard knew that his death was impending, he disposed of most everything except his real estate, giving to friends and others practically all of his personal effects. I do recall a large box of magazine articles, clipped from different magazines, because I helped prepare it for shipment to a friend of Robert’s in California, but I do not recall the friend’s name nor address, and no record was found in the records left by Doctor Howard.

This friend was, of course, E. Hoffmann Price. But Oscar Friend still had some good stuff in his own files. Besides the three Conan stories, de Camp appears to have found at least two other items in the Kline files of interest to him. On September 22, 1953, Friend wrote to John C. [sic: D.] Clark, editor of the Gnome series, saying that he was “snowed under with paperwork and just couldn’t get at the task of digging through the retired file of material for the herewith enclosed two Robert Howard scripts that Sprague brought specifically to our attention: ‘Men of the Shadows’ [and] ‘Night of the Wolf.’ When you are through with these two scripts please return.”

Both of these stories remained unpublished until 1969’s Dell publication, Bran Mak Morn. But back in 1953, the last Howard of the year was a reprint of “The Black Stone” in the November Weird Tales. In that year’s introduction to King Conan, L. Sprague de Camp had said that the “Conan epic is of course incomplete.” As the 1950s rolled along, he would do his best to correct that.

[Go to Part 5]

The long awaited and much anticpated four volume collection of Howard’s huge body of boxing material is finally ready for publication. These volumes, published by the REH Foundation Press, are in such demand the first editions are sure to sell out quicker than the first edition of The Early Adventures of El Borak, which went pretty darn fast. The first volume of Fists of Iron is due out in a few weeks and can be pre-ordered now; here is the complete list of contents for “Round 1″:

Introduction:

“The Brute Eternal” by Christopher Gruber

Stories:

“The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux”
“Double Cross”
“The Weeping Willow”
“The Right Hook”
“The Voice of Doom”
“Crowd Horror”
“Iron Men”
“The Mark of a Bloody Hand”
“They Always Come Back”
“The Trail of the Snake”

Poems:

“Kid Lavigne is Dead”
“Aw Come on and Fight!”
“The Cooling of Spike McRue”
“Fables for Little Folks”
“The Champ”
“Slugger’s Vow”
“In the Ring”
Untitled (“And Dempsey climbed into the ring”)
Untitled (“They matched me up that night”)
“Down the Ages”
“John L. Sullivan”
“Jack Dempsey”
Untitled (“We are the duckers of crosses”)
Untitled (“All the crowd”)
“When you Were a Set-up and I Was a Ham”

Early Tales, Variants and Fragments:

“The Spirit of Brian Boru”
“A Man of Peace”
“The Atavist” (unfinished)
“Cupid vs. Pollux”
“The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux” (alternate version)
Untitled fragment (“I had just hung…”)
“The Ferocious Ape” (fragment)
Untitled fragment (“Spike Morissey…”)
Untitled fragment (“The tale has always been…”)
“The Ghost Behind the Gloves” (fragment)
“Lobo Volante” (fragment)
“Night Encounter” (incomplete)
“The Folly of Concei” (unfinished)
“Iron Men” (first version)

Articles:

“Dula Due to be Champion”
“The Punch”
“Men of Iron”

Odds and Ends:

Untitled document, incomplete, perhaps from an essay
“Jeffries Versus Dempsey”
“Misto Dempsey”
‘The Funniest Bout”
Boxing material from Howard’s self-published The Right Hook

Appendix:

“The Lord of the Ring” (part 1), by Patrice Louinet

You can pre-order the first one or all four to ensure you get the complete set. Here are the blow-by-blow ordering details on the REHF website. So don’t just lie there on the canvas waiting for the 10 count to end — be a Champ and order all four today!

[Part 2 is here]

Following the publication of the first Gnome Press Conan book, Conan the Conqueror, things on the Howard publishing front slowed down again. The only items to appear in print in 1951 were the November Weird Tales reprint of “Pigeons from Hell” and a couple of Howard’s poems in Bob Briney’s fanzine Crit-Q. But things were popping behind the scenes.

In a May 10, 1951 letter to P. M. Kuykendall, Howard agent Oscar J. Friend tells his client about the royalty situation with Gnome Press: “They paid us $100 before, and now have made another $100 payment.” And Friend had other news; apparently he had finally gotten around to investigating the Howard titles left over in the Kline files: “I am selling the first reworked Howard story—“The House of Arabu”—to Avon publications for $86.00, and will shortly receive payment and will remit 50% (or $43.00) of this first serial sale to you.” On June 4, Friend wrote again:

We are still awaiting more royalties due from Gnome Press on Conan the Conqueror—and the advent of the second book in the series. Meanwhile, here is the first new income on some of the old Robert Howard material which we have worked over and to which we have just sold the first North American serial rights to Avon Fantasy Reader on our fifty-fifty agreement.

As stated previously, Friend received $86 for the tale and divided the proceeds, with half going to Kuykendall and half for “Kline Associates.” Friend ends his letter by saying that there “will be other first sales later as we can work over the Howard material.”

Friend wrote Kuykendall again on July 13, explaining the royalty situation with Gnome Press. At that time, Gnome owed $443.85 and had paid $200 previously, and Friend added, “Today we have collected another $200 of this amount,” leaving Gnome a balance of $43.85. Friend concluded with the following: “The publishers have assured us that this amount will be covered in the next royalty statement in the fall. Also, the second book of the Conan stories, The Sword of Conan, is now in process of preparation.”

By year’s end, there was still no movement on the Conan books, but in a December 5, 1951 letter, Friend sends Kuykendall some royalties from Arkham House and tells the doctor that the “second Conan book will be coming up for publication shortly,” but that wasn’t all that was on Friend’s mind:

Meanwhile, at this time, let me ask you if you know of any Robert E. Howard material or manuscripts or parts of manuscripts, or any unpublished Howard material at all. I am well aware that Mr. Otis Kline got most of Bob’s material from Dr. Howard, but if there’s the least scrap of stuff around Ranger that you know of, please wrap it up and send it to me. I would like, also, to have a copy of the British-published book, A Gent from Bear Creek, if you happen to have one laying around. I think we can sell a few of the stories in the second serial markets.

In 1952, things started to pick up again. Besides the fanzine appearance of “Song at Midnight” in Orb #10, a ’zine published by Bob Johnson, Friend’s reworked “House of Arabu” appeared as “The Witch from Hell’s Kitchen” in Avon Fantasy Reader #18; “Texas John Alden” appeared for the third time in eight years in Top Western Fiction Annual; and the December 1952 Famous Fantastic Mysteries ran “Skull-Face.” There were also some interesting developments in the Conan saga. But the year began with a rider agreement, dated February 11, 1952 and signed by Friend and August Derleth, to the Arkham House contract for Skull-Face and Others:

Whereas there have developed since the execution of the publishing contract between Arkham House and Otis Adelbert Kline on November 17, 1945, on Skull-Face and Others the possibilities of leasing various foreign book publishing rights to this volume, it is understood and agreed that Arkham House shall participate to the extent of twenty-five percent (25 %) of the net proceeds from any such placements.

Also on February 11, Friend wrote to Kuykendall, enclosing a royalty report from Arkham House and a check “for the one-time reprint serial rights to the story ‘Skull-Face,’ by Robert E. Howard, out of the Arkham House collection of Skull-Face and Others.” As part of their agreement, Arkham received a percentage for any story from Skull-Face sold on the secondary market. This agreement appears to be part of the reason for the Gnome Press arrangement of Conan stories:

For your information, the reason this royalty report has been held up so long is that we all figured the new series of CONAN books would be using certain Conan stories out of the Arkham House collection, and, anticipating this, Arkham House held up this payment to apply against monies which would be owing them for use of such stories. However, the present publisher of the Conan stories, Gnome Press, rearranged the order in which he is publishing the series, and no Arkham House stories will be used until the third book (fall of 1952 or spring of 1953). Thus, I deducted the old amount hanging fire from the Arkham check and include it in yours. This brings accounts up to 1951.

Regarding the Conan series, Friend closed with this:

I have just finished working with the publisher getting galleys and proofs and artwork, etc., ready on the second book. It will appear some time this coming spring—a collection of four Conan novelettes under the overall title of The Sword of Conan.

Back in 1950, in the introduction to Conan the Conqueror, editor John D. Clark had said that “Marty Greenberg and Dave Kyle asked me to help them with the job of arranging and editing the whole set of yarns, and to write an introduction for the lot of them.” Clark’s editorial stance was made explicit:

Very little editing was necessary or has been done. Even in the yarns clearly written before the idea of the Hyborian Age was born, changing the tense of a verb or two was usually all that was needed to make the story fit in. The Hour of the Dragon, the contents of this volume, was not entirely consistent with the chronology of “The Hyborian Age” and a slight insertion in the latter was necessary to clear things up. And that was about all. We don’t think that Howard would have minded and we hope that you don’t.

1952’s The Sword of Conan was also edited by Clark, but due to the appearance of “The Witch from Hell’s Kitchen,” things were about to change.

[Part 4 is here.]

People with epic imaginations are rare; rarer still are those who can display that imagination in such an artistic way that it becomes captivating, turning us into life-long fans.  Frank Frazetta did it with brush and canvas, Robert E. Howard did it with words and a typewriter, and Ray Harryhausen dazzled us with his mastery of the cinematic art of animation.

I was in grade school when I encountered Harryhausen’s The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad at the local drive-in theater and it was the perfect place for an introduction.  To this anxious youngster night had finally fallen and my family was quietly watching the movie, listening to the voices coming from the speaker attached to the window of the car.  I was sitting in the back seat, probably busily eating an ice cream Dixie Cup and munching on a Seven-Up candy bar.

But then the magic happened.  First I saw bad guy Torin Thatcher fleeing from the cave of the Cyclops and then, hot on his heels, came the one-eyed monster itself, bellowing like only a Harryhausen monster could bellow and it scared the hell out of me.  I loved it!

More memories.  I recall sitting in a crowded theater, watching the eye-popping wizardry of the sword fight between Jason and the skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts and I couldn’t take my eyes away from the screen.  However, great as that scene was, my favorite moment from that movie had occurred earlier, when the giant Talos awakened into life and really beat the crap out of Jason and his men.

I could go on forever, all of us could.  Blessed with a special talent was Mr. Harryhausen, and blessed were we to be able to view all that artistry that could make us believe, perhaps just for a moment, that winged harpies could indeed exist, and that a creature from Venus could grow to staggering proportions and that oversized insect-like beings could live deep within the moon.

Luckily I have the day off, so tonight I’m going to voyaging once again with Sinbad and remember back to that time when my life really was changed, and I realized that the world of imagination was every bit as important as the world of reality.   I might even fix myself a bowl of ice cream—the helping, of course, will be somewhat larger than it was when I first watched that movie, all those years ago.

1592 — Kane is now thirty-eight. With the spring, he fits out a privateer and sails from Bristol across the Atlantic for the West Indies once again. His second-in-command is Godfrey Taferal, the eldest brother of Marylin, whom Kane rescued from Negari. Godfrey is a trusty man of thirty, who has sailed as a merchant to India, and a ship’s master. He fought against the Spanish Armada. Kane could not ask for better backing.

He seeks retribution for his experiences in Spain. He also knows too well that King Philip is still planning to conquer England, and a second fiasco like that of the “Invincible Armada” is unlikely. The next attempt would be better organized. The best way to prevent another try is to deprive Philip of the sinews of war – which derive from the New World’s gold and silver.

Kane takes rich prizes between Veracruz on the Mexican Gulf Coast and Havana in Cuba – the route over which Mexican silver is shipped on its way to Seville in Spain. A merchant of Veracruz deals with Kane and passes information to him. (The Spanish crown taxed private merchants’ wares at a rate of twenty per cent, the “quinto real” or royal fifth. Dealing through Kane, the Spaniard can evade this. A Puritan merchant of Bristol, Godfrey’s father-in-law, receives the cargoes at the English end.)

Kane, always restless, sweeps along the northern coast of Cuba next, taking prizes, and then attacks Santiago, after which he raids southward against Rio de la Hacha. Both raids are successful. Queen Elizabeth has so far done well out of the privateer’s commission her ministers gave Kane.

She will soon do even better. Kane careens his vessel on a remote shore of the Yucatan peninsula, and hears stories of a lost city in the jungle of the interior. The Spaniards have not yet subdued that region, and many Mayas took refuge there from the fanatical Bishop de Landa. But this is not a Mayan city. Aztecs fleeing the conquest by Cortez made a trek into Yucatan between 1520 and 1530, taking a vast hoard of gold with them. Now, sixty years later, they have established a small hidden city of their own, and worship their terrible gods in the way of their ancestors, with blood sacrifice and sorcery, preying on the Mayans of the jungles. Kane leads his pirates to the evil city, overthrows it, and delivers the Mayans from the Aztecs’ tyranny. He also obtains the gold.

1593 — There is an immense reward on Kane’s head. It is increased when Kane makes a run to Cartagena. This major New World port is one of three cities visited by the annual treasure fleets bound ultimately for Seville. Kane waits outside the town for the treasure fleet to leave. By luck two treasure ships are separated from the rest of the fleet in a storm. They contain gold, emeralds and pearls. Kane captures them and sends this remarkable haul – along with the Aztec gold – back to England with Godfrey Taferal. Although not greedy for wealth himself, and scornful of Elizabeth and her crooked officials, he knows England desperately needs it for the war effort if she is not to be conquered by Spain.

Kane has had enough tender Spanish attention.

In the Ukraine, the Cossack sich of Tomakivka Island on the lower Dneiper is destroyed by Tatars. The Cossacks replace it by building another at Bazavluk, also on the Dneiper. That is to last until 1638. A Polish military expedition will destroy it in that year, in retaliation for a Cossack rising.

1594 — Kane is now forty. Keeping the more seaworthy and heavily armed of the captured carracks, he recruits more freebooters and sails eastward to Brazil. Portuguese possessions are fair game. Dutch privateers at this time are Kane’s strongest competitors on these coasts. Spain was always the Low Countries’ tyrant and foe, and now Portugal is one with Spain.

Brazil has been divided into fifteen provinces. Only two are financially successful; the region of Pernambuco in the north-east, with its sugar plantations, and one other which exploits the native Indians for the slave trade. However, black slaves from Portuguese Africa are preferred. Red dyewood is another export, the only valuable ones besides sugar. Gold has not yet been discovered.

Kane and his men take prizes. He recruits desperate Indians and escaped slaves into his privateer band, building a fleet of four ships. Driven by his everlasting restless demon, Kane voyages southward to the region of present-day Uruguay. Kane finds evidence of Crimson Jack Callice’s work when he makes landfall. Callice is up to his old Caribbean tricks of taking Indians as slave cargo and forcing Spanish and Portuguese settlers to buy them, under the threat of his ship’s guns – at the pirate’s own exorbitant prices. Such is Crimson Jack’s idea of honest trade.

In this instance he has held a meeting with a large group of Charrua, offering them guns and rum, then treacherously massacred the men and enslaved the women and children. Kane is enraged. He pursues Callice southward, and finds when he catches him that Callice hurled the Charrua women and children overboard to lighten ship. Kane swears his death. He pursues Callice further south yet, down the coast of Patagonia and into the waters around Cape Horn, before losing him among the stormy waters and deadly reefs.

He returns north again. To his disgust he finds that the Brotherhood of the Main has lost its original purpose of fighting the Spanish and become an association of bloody pirates. Hardraker and Callice are characteristic of the new breed. Kane hears Hardraker’s atrocities spoken of, though the Fishhawk has left the Caribbean for parts unknown. Kane leaves word among the Brotherhood that if he crosses Hardraker’s path he will finish him.

1594 — Kane sails eastward across the Atlantic for Africa. Some of the escaped slaves among his crew wish to return there. Others opt for Italy or France, having nothing in Africa to which they can return, since in Africa they were criminals, inconvenient heirs or prisoners taken in tribal wars. They, like the Indians and white men in Kane’s crew, can realise enough profit from this voyage to live tolerably thereafter.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Part 1 is here]

At the beginning of 1948, Ora Fay Rossini was running the business of her deceased father, Otis Adelbert Kline, but she likely already knew that she wouldn’t be doing it for much longer. Some time in February, probably, she wrote to the Kuykendalls to inform them that she was moving to Texas with her husband, Pierre L. Rossini. On March 4, Dr. P. M. Kuykendall responded: “I am glad to know that you and your husband are coming to Texas in the near future.” He goes on to explain some of the difficulties they will encounter in finding housing “in and around Grand Prairie.” He also thanks Rossini for a royalty payment from Arkham House.

Before June 17, 1948, Rossini recalled, she “turned over everything to Oscar Friend, including material published and unpublished, records, files, etc.” On June 17, the new owner of the Kline Agency sat down and wrote a letter to Kuykendall, informing him of a forthcoming reprint of “The Cairn on the Headland” and explaining himself:

For your information, I have purchased the Otis Kline agency from the Kline heirs—being an old friend and client of Mr. Kline’s myself—and am handling all of the business details of unfinished affairs in the name of the Klines without disturbing anything. Please feel free to write and ask me for any information at any time. I have the complete Howard file and records in my office.

On September 5, 1948, Friend informed his client of another sale: “We have just sold the anthology one-time reprint rights to Ralph [sic!] E. Howard’s short story, ‘Queen of the Black Coast,’ to Avon Publishing Co., for $25. We enclose herewith our check drawn in your favor in full payment to cover this transaction.’ This and “The Cairn on the Headland” were the only Howard stories published in English in 1948; a note in Friend’s archives dated December 17, 1948— “Sent royalty check to Dr. Kuykendall. No letter, only royalty statement.”—rounds out the year.

There was only one Howard appearance in English in 1949: “A Witch Shall Be Born” appeared in an issue of the Avon Fantasy Reader; “Shave That Hog” was probably on the stands in December ’49, but the edition of Max Brand’s Western Magazine in which it appeared was dated January 1950. But in a May 5, 1949 letter to Kuykendall, Oscar Friend let his client know that things were going to change:

I am arranging a nice deal with another publisher to do a complete collection of the Conan stories. I will keep you informed as to matters. Things move slowly many times in the publishing world, and especially during the present period of recession. I haven’t got around to reading the heretofore unpublished Howard material I have on hand, and can’t say just when—or what, but I will keep you apprised of all developments.

But things were moving fairly quick. On May 9, Martin Greenberg, top dog at Gnome Press, wrote to Friend: “Here is the list of the Conan stories. So far it is set up for four books. I understand we may include more stories and make it five books.” This is followed by his outline of the contents for four books to be published by Gnome: The Coming of Conan, Conan the Barbarian, The Sword of Conan, and Conan the King. Greenberg hopes to “do one of the Conan books this fall,” and tells Friend, “I get more enthusiastic every day when I contemplate what a terrific deal this is going to be.”

On September 17, Friend dropped Kuykendall a line to tell him of the sale of “The Gods of Bal-Sagoth” to Avon (appearing as “The Blonde Goddess of Bal-Sagoth” in a 1950 Avon Fantasy Reader) and to apprise him of the situation with Gnome: “The Conan the Barbarian project is taking rather ambitious size and has grown to a set of four volumes in uniform binding, to be brought out as rapidly one after the other as possible. However, it looks more like a 1950 project.”

In a January 17, 1950 letter, Friend explains the breakdown of Kuykendall’s Arkham House royalties and provides another Conan update: “The new publishing deal on the CONAN stories is to start this year and will consist of four or five volumes in uniform binding, taking two years to get the entire set on the market.” On April 21, Friend tells the doctor of the sale of “The Voice of El-Lil” (which appeared in one of that year’s Avon Fantasy Readers bearing the god-awful title of “Temptress of the Tower of Torture and Sin”!) and another update on the Gnome series:

The plans are slowly maturing on the Conan the Barbarian collection of Bob’s stories to be published in not less than three volumes (perhaps four or five) and I will send you copies of the contracts as they are now executed—and royalty advances as they begin to come through. I have been definitely promised action by the publisher (Gnome Press) before the end of this year.

Conan wasn’t the only Howard property receiving attention in 1950. On May 22, 1950, Harry Widmer, managing editor of Popular Publications, wrote a letter addressed to Robert E. Howard in Cross Plains:

Dear Mr. Howard:

     We are planning to use in Max Brand’s Western stories which have stood the test of time and remained high in the memory of the readers and in the opinion of our editors.
Your story “Vulture’s Sanctuary,” which originally appeared in the November 28, 1936 issue of Argosy, has been selected. We are planning to include it in a future issue of Max Brand’s Western.
Although our records show that we purchased all serial rights to this story, we will pay for it at our prevailing second serial rights rate. On this basis, we can offer you $20.00 for the second serial rights.
Will you be good enough to verify your present address, so we can mail your bonus check to you.

Sincerely,
Harry Widmer

With no Howards left in Cross Plains, the letter was forwarded to Dr. Kuykendall in Ranger, who forwarded it to Friend on June 1, 1950, the same month and year as the cover date on the magazine in which the story appeared. On June 13, Friend responded to Kuykendall with more Arkham House royalties and $15 for “Vulture’s Sanctuary”; he had taken $5.00 as his “minimum commission.”

Friend’s August 10, 1950 letter to Kuykendall is all Conan:

I am happy to report that at last we have got the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard moving again. As I wrote previously, I have arranged with Gnome Press to publish all the Conan stories in about five uniform volumes as a set (although the books will be printed only one at a time at the approximate rate of two volumes per year) with the same binding and with end maps in both front and back of each book—maps of the world in which Conan lived and roamed. There will also be an introduction by Dr. Arthur C. [sic: John D.] Clark, a friend and admirer of Robert Howard. All in all, the project promises to be a fine piece of work and should net the estate a tidy sum over a period of several years. At least, I earnestly hope so.

Friend goes on to explain his check for “the first advance royalty” on the first book, coming in the fall, to be entitled Conan the Conqueror, adding that “in the event that you are familiar with the Conan stories and wonder as to why they will appear as they do, let me explain that they are not being put out in chronological order for several reasons. However, when the set is complete, any possessor of the works will be able to arrange the books in precisely the right order on his library shelf.” Friend assures Kuykendall that he is “taking care of all details concerning this publishing project” and will himself “read final proof on the job.” He closes his letter with the following:

The other Howard material I wrote you about last year (the heretofore unsold stories) I shall start going over with Gnome Press (who want to publish all Howard material that is not utterly hopeless) and I shall attend to the re-writing of such material as can be whipped into shape for today’s market.

Besides the stories mentioned above, a reprint of “Texas John Alden” appeared in the fall 1950 issue of Hopalong Cassidy’s Western Magazine. Of course, the real news for that year was Conan the Conqueror.

[Part 3 is here.]

[I did a bit of reporting on this topic in 2011's "The Kline Connection"--since that time, a wealth of new material has come to light. What follows is the first installment of an expanded version of "The Kline Connection."]

Some time in the spring of 1933, Robert E. Howard enlisted pulp-writer-turned-agent Otis Adelbert Kline to help place his stories in markets other than Weird Tales. Upon Howard’s death, Kline continued to market Howard’s stories for his father, Dr. I. M. Howard. Doctor Howard sent Kline the contents of his son’s trunk and Kline removed those items that might interest a publisher—many of these ended up in the files—the rest he returned to Doctor Howard. When the good doctor passed away, November 12, 1944, he left the rights to his son’s stories to his colleague, Dr. P. M. Kuykendall. All the details of this little history can be found in The Collected Letters of Doctor Isaac M. Howard (REHF Press, of course). Our story begins here.

Following the death of Doctor Howard, Doctor Kuykendall sent out notices to those he thought should know, including E. Hoffmann Price and Otis A. Kline. Price responded by sending Kuykendall a box of cigars; Kline responded with condolences and the following, dated November 18, 1944:

I’ll appreciate it if you will let me know who I can contact as his successor to the estate of his son, Robert. As the doctor may have told you, I was negotiating the publication of a book of his stories, and the present heir or heirs will no doubt want these negotiations completed.

Kuykendall responded with the requested information on December 19:

Under the terms of the will of the late Dr. I. M. Howard I have been made independent executor of his estate. Since I am not at all familiar with the status of the affairs pertaining to his son’s stories, I will have to depend upon you to furnish me with this information.

The early 1940s were not very good years for Howard publishing. Several yarns had been reprinted under house names in both Fight Stories and Spicy Adventures, a few poems had been reprinted in Canadian issues of Weird Tales and a couple of fan magazines, but the only real sale had been to Masked Rider Western, who published “Texas John Alden” in its May 1944 issue. That, and “The Black Stone,” reprinted in Sleep No More, are the only stories published in 1944. On December 28, Kline brought Kuykendall up to speed:

The only deal I have pending at present is the collection of Robert’s stories being assembled for publication in book form by August Derleth. The doctor not only authorized this, but I understand it was the dearest wish of his heart that a collection of stories and a collection of poems be published in book form.

And these weren’t the only details that Kuykendall had to attend to; Doctor Howard’s will states unequivocally that Kuykendall was to receive “all property, both real and personal,” which left Kuykendall with a lot of sorting to do. In a February 7, 1945 letter to E. Hoffmann Price, Kuykendall explains that all of Doctor Howard’s “personal effects, car, clothing, etc., were sent to his nephew Wallace Howard. The only thing to dispose of now are Robert’s stories; some of which were published and others in manuscripts (all).”

There are a few suggestions in the surviving correspondence that Doctor Howard had attempted to place some, if not all, of this material at Howard Payne College in Brownwood. He certainly donated Robert’s library and pulp collection. The story goes that when he saw the treatment his son’s pulp magazines were receiving there, he withdrew everything but the books, which could handle rough treatment, but there is mention of other documents perhaps being housed there, including letters, which may have been lost in the shuffle. Other letters from the period indicate that some of REH’s papers were burned when Doctor Howard moved from Cross Plains to Ranger, and that Dr. Howard may have sent little items of his son’s to various people.

Whatever the state of Howard’s trunk upon Doctor Howard’s death, Kuykendall had no use for it. In his February letter, he tells Price:

There is a large trunk full of these [REH “manuscripts”]. I thought perhaps you might like to have them. If you do want them, let me know and I’ll send them prepaid to you and you can just throw the old trunk away—it is strong [enough] to send them in.

Upon receiving the above, Price wrote back to Kuykendall (this letter appears to be lost) and appended a few paragraphs onto another letter that he was writing to August Derleth, then in the final stages of preparation on Skull-Face and Others. [Note: this letter appears in The Collected Letters of Doctor Isaac M. Howard, but it is misdated “circa December 1944.” It clearly belongs after February 7, 1945.] Price relayed the news that he was to receive the trunk, but predicted that it would contain nothing but “Duds—juvenilia—miscellanea—from [Derleth’s] viewpoint, nothing worth considering for the REH book.” Price had visited REH in Cross Plains twice before, so he may have heard Robert’s opinion of it, or seen the contents then himself.

Upon receiving Price’s letter, Doctor Kuykendall’s wife, Alla Ray, responded with the following, dated February 21, 1945:

Received your letter last week, are glad you wanted Robert Howard’s papers. We did not go through them and are sure many of them are useless, but are sending you all we can find. Sent you four rather large boxes today by parcel post[;] hope they reach you in good order.

Mrs. Kuykendall also asks if Doctor Howard had already sent “a steel trunk or box of Robert’s papers” which the Kuykendalls had “not located” since Dr. Howard’s death. This “steel trunk” remains a mystery, but Price did receive the other items sometime before March 11. On that day, he wrote to Derleth:

Four boxes of REH relics arrived: tear sheets of published yarns, weird, western, adventure, etc.; some high school themes, several bales; carbons of mss; rejected originals; half-finished yarns; a bound ms of 81,500 words, Gent from Bear Creek, made up of Breckinridge Elkins yarns threaded into a continuity, and put on offer by Otis Kline, and presumably returned by Kline as unsalable. There is also a scrap book of the kind popular with women in the 1880s-90s, my mother had one, years ago, I vaguely remember it. Colored pictures, sentimental occasion cards; news clippings, verses, etc. pressed flowers after the manner of the times. Mrs. Howard’s, without doubt.

With Doctor Howard’s possessions distributed, the Kuykendalls got on with their lives. The Howard material, and ownership of the copyrights, did not interrupt again until November 17, 1945. On that day, Otis Kline wrote to P. M. Kuykendall:

I am very pleased to be able to tell you that I have now been able to close the deal for the collection of my late client’s, Robert E. Howard’s stories, to be issued to Arkham House, which will be titled Skull-Face and Others, which deal I reported to you as pending on December 28, 1944, as previously authorized by Dr. Howard.

Copies of the contract, which Kline suggested was “a very good” one, were included with the letter. Already signed by Derleth and Kline, all that was required was Kuykendall’s OK, which he supplied. 1945 was a bad year for Howard publishing, and this was the first time Kuykendall had been called upon to approve anything–a few Howard items had been released in the amateur press (E. Hoffmann Price’s issue of The Ghost and William Crawford’s booklet containing “The Garden of Fear”), but other than a few poems in the Canadian Weird Tales and an Armed Services reprint of Sleep No More, nothing had appeared by a “real” publisher.

Skull-Face and Others was released in 1946. It is the only Howard publishing that occured that year, though Doctor Kuykendall would receive a small payment for an upcoming item, as explained in this September 1 letter from Otis Kline:

I take pleasure in enclosing check to cover remittance just received from Arkham House for the sale of the reprint rights in “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” by Robert E. Howard, by them, to Avon Books, for inclusion in a volume to be published in paper bound form this fall, to be titled The Ghost Reader.

Doctor Kuykendall received $11.25 for this sale. Otis Kline died the next month, October 24, 1946. His daughter, Ora Fay Rosinni, carried on the agency. The Ghost Reader never materialized, but Avon used “Mirrors” in its Avon Fantasy Reader #2 in 1947. This would be the only Howard story published in English that year.

Luckily, August Derleth was still game. 1947 brought the first big publication of Howard’s verse. The Arkham House collection Dark of the Moon contains 13 of Howard’s poems. In his introduction to the volume, Derleth described it as “a representative collection of the best poetry of the macabre and fantastic in English.” Of the Weird Tales authors included therein–Lovecraft, Smith, Howard, Wandrei–Derleth conceded that they “deserve some modest recognition.”

By the end of 1947, Ora Fay had just about had enough of the family business.

[Go to Part 2]

In October 2008 I had an article published in The Cimmerian, “When Yaller Rock County Came to Chawed Ear,” and my main point in the essay was to show the influence that W. C. Tuttle, a very popular writer for Adventure, had upon Robert E. Howard and his creation of Breckinridge Elkins.  At the same time I had lightly touched upon the similarity of Alan LeMay’s comedic series of Hank Montgomery and Bug Eye stories to Howard’s Pike Bearfield tales.

The Bearfield and Montgomery stories are epistolary fiction, which can mean yarns told with the use of newspaper articles or diary entries, or through an exchange of letters.  Dracula is one of the most famous examples, and in modern times another pretty good example is Max Brooks’ World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. 

At the time of my writing that article I only had the one Montgomery story, “Hank Arrives Back Ware He Cum Frum” to go by, so I gave LeMay the short treatment of just one paragraph.  Lately, however, I have picked up another copy of Adventure, from June 1928, and this one includes the LeMay tale, “Hank’s Other Pardner.” In an extreme good stroke of fortune I was also able to find, and purchase, a hardcover collection of these stories, simply titled Bug Eye, and from what I’ve been able to gather this volume is somewhat rare.

So right now I’m engaging in some research and will hopefully be able to give LeMay a little better treatment—I’m planning to write an essay dealing with just the LeMay influence upon Howard.  LeMay, the author of The Searchers and The Unforgiven deserves no less.

“Dear Bug Eye” is how the LeMay stories usually begin, with Hank writing to this goofily named partner of his, and they are funny ones, albeit told in a vernacular that is a bit difficult to understand, but Howard fans shouldn’t have any trouble with it—they’ll recognize some of it from the Texan’s tall tales.  To help things out a little more I noticed that LeMay, in the hardcover edition, did tame down his letter writer’s outrageous vernacular a bit.  For proof of this, “Vijiluntys” in the pulp becomes “Vigilantes” in the hardcover.

A couple of short selections from the book should show some of the similarity between LeMay and Howard.  In “Hank Arrives Back Ware He Cum Frum” our letter writing hero decides he is going to marry the salon owner’s daughter and he brings the subject up to the father, typically, with no finesse.  “Has your daughter ever been married Mister Otoole.  He said No.  I said I would not worry about that, I wouldunt be surprised if she had a chance soon.  He said yes I am soon talking her back east for that very reason.  It will not be necessary I said I have a better plan.  How would you like me for a son in law Mister Otoole.  He said nothing for a minute.  I thought he had not understanded me.  I repeated my question slightly louder.  He said nothing at all Bug Eye, he went on about his work, which happened to be getting out a double barrel shot gun from under the bar and examining it very close…”

Hank leaves the bar in a hurry, but nothing daunted, when he later runs into the salon keeper’s daughter he tells her of his intentions.  “Lets get married I said.  She said Not yet.  I said Why not yet.  She said I am still in my right mind.”  This should be research I’m going to enjoy—fun essay to write and hopefully a fun one to read.

This post gives me a chance to show off a couple of those beautiful Adventure pulps—the top cover is by Hubert Rogers and the other is the work of Duncan MacMillan, and of course, both include a “Bug Eye” story.