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The Glenn Lord Collection of Robert E. Howard includes numerous drafts of Howard’s
short
fiction and poetry. The majority of the drafts are fair-copy typescripts or carbons,
although handwritten drafts are also present, as are photocopies and “retypes” created
by
Lord. Although generally in good condition, the drafts are often on acidic and brittle
paper
and some are heavily yellowed. Also present in the collection is correspondence between
Howard, publishers, friends, family, and other authors, third-party correspondence
dating
into the 1960s, and some of Howard’s school work and personal records. |
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To save paper, Howard often left small margins on the sides and bottom of pages, and
he
would write new drafts on the back of older material. Howard did not always title
his
stories, and he frequently did not number pages. If a work did not sell in one genre,
Howard
sometimes reworked his material, even just part of a story, to fit a different genre.
Both
he and his editors often changed the titles of stories when submitting works to different
publications. Early in his career, Howard would send his original drafts to publishers.
These drafts were not often returned, so he began to use carbons to make copies of
the
drafts. |
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Howard made little effort to organize his papers. After his untimely death, his father
(Dr.
I. M. Howard) and an assistant spent several days attempting to sort the papers in
order to
send them to an agent, Otis Adelbert Kline. Kline only kept a small number of the
transcripts, returning the majority which were stored in a large trunk. Following
the death
of I. M. Howard, the trunk passed to E. Hoffman Price in California. Price shared
the
stories with friends, and the material was not always returned. |
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Beginning in 1965, Glenn Lord became the agent for the Howard heirs and began gathering
back the drafts and organizing and identifying the materials. During this process,
if one of
the stories was untitled, Lord would often create one. He also made notes when he
found
stories typed on the reverse of other stories. Lord (or someone else) also replaced
damaged
pages in the middle of stories. They are typed in a similar way to Howard’s pages,
and on
similar paper, but the straightness of the lines and the lack of damaged keys indicates
these replacements (referred to as clone pages on a spreadsheet created by Paul Herman:
see
below). Almost all of the poetry was retyped by Lord, and he retyped a few of the
stories.
Some of the transcripts were later destroyed in flooding and only exist as photocopies
in
the possession of Patrice Louinet, the Harvard scholar and French editor of Howard’s
books
whom Lord had provided with copies before the original’s destruction. |
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A spreadsheet created by Paul Herman of the Robert E. Howard Foundation, and editor
of a
Howard bibliography, contains detailed information about the titles of the works and
types
of materials in the collection. All of the materials were given five digit “Bates”
numbers
that are listed on the folders in the collection and are organized in ascending order.
The
spreadsheet includes some documents not in the possession of the Ransom Center, such
as
those held by Louinet. At some point, much of the material was scanned and in some
cases
only these scans are in the Ransom Center holdings. If there are originals along with
the
scans, the original will typically have a lower Bates number. |
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The physical organization of the collection by Bates numbers was retained by the Ransom
Center, however, the finding aid is organized intellectually into three series: I.
Works,
1920-1936, undated; II. Correspondence, 1924-1965; and III. Personal and Career Papers,
1920-1922, undated. |
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Series I. Works consists mostly of typescripts of short fiction and poetry, as well
as
drawings of maps and cartoons. All drafts are complete unless otherwise noted. The
series is
divided into three subseries: A. Short Fiction, 1920-1936, B. Untitled Short Fiction,
undated; and C. Poetry, undated. |
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Series II. Correspondence is divided into three subseries: A. Outgoing, 1925-1965;
B.
Incoming, 1925-1936; and C. Third Party Correspondence, 1925-1945. Howard’s correspondents
include several of his contemporaries: H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, and E. Hoffman
Price, among others. Third party correspondence between Dr. I. M. Howard, Ed Price,
and
others is included, some of which is filed in the outgoing and the incoming subseries.
Letter dates, when not provided, were taken from The Collected
Letters of Robert E. Howard . |
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Series III. Personal and Career Papers includes a relatively small volume of notes,
drawings, inventories, and reports. Of note are several folders of Howard’s schoolwork
from
the early 1920s and three works by other authors. |
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Series IV. Electronic Files contains electronic scans of the collection, as well as
spreadsheet
guide and bibliography. |
