Robert E. Howard

[B.A. Fox]

Would Robert E. Howard be considered historical fiction?

 

[j d worthington]

Would Robert E. Howard be considered historical fiction?

Certainly some of it might be. He wrote many Westerns, though most of those were set in his own period or shortly before; a lot of these can be found in the Bison volumes The End of the Trail and The Riot at Bucksnort and the Wildside Press The Compete Action Stories. He also wrote a fair number of stories set during the Crusades, as well as other periods; a representative sampling can be found in the Bison The Lord of Samarcand and the Wildside Press Gates of Empire and Treasures of Tartary. He didn't necessarily research his tales all that well, going on the histories he'd read over the years and a vivid imagination and (as de Camp once put it) "the underlying tragedy of life" of such periods. (A large number of his Westerns, however, were also humorous, more in the nature of tall tales, such as those concerning Breck Elkins or Jeopardy Grimes. His straight Westerns, on the other hand, tended to be quite stark and grim, and would make some very good films were a modern filmmaker to remain relatively faithful to the original material.)

On a tangential note, he also wrote a lot of sport stories -- especially boxing, which was a passion of his -- which were almost entirely set in his own period but which have now become closer to historical fiction in the sense of being a (highly fictionalized) peek at a past time....

 

[Connavar]

He wrote crusade stories, stories set in 1500s,1600s, 1200s and i dont think he lived then

His westerns stories in End of Trail is set in 1870s-1880s which is typical western setting for more grim,realistic westerns that want to show the dying years of the fame,myths of old west.

Frankly im a big Howard fan with several collections of historical fictions so you can talk about his historical fictions here with fans like me and dont need to go to his SFF thread.