The Horror from the Mound
by Robert E. Howard 
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Description
This early work by Robert E. Howard was originally published in the 1932 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Horror from the Mound' is one of Howard's stories in the weird west genre, a combination of a western and a horror or fantasy. Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas in 1906. During his youth, his family moved between a variety of Texan boomtowns, and Howard - a bookish and somewhat introverted child - was steeped in the violent myths show more and legends of the Old South. At fifteen Howard began to read the pulp magazines of the day, and to write more seriously. The December 1922 issue of his high school newspaper featured two of his stories, 'Golden Hope Christmas' and 'West is West'. In 1924 he sold his first piece - a short caveman tale titled 'Spear and Fang' - for $16 to the not-yet-famous Weird Tales magazine. Howard's most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian, was a barbarian-turned-King during the Hyborian Age, a mythical period of some 12,000 years ago. Conan featured in seventeen Weird Tales stories between 1933 and 1936 which is why Howard is now regarded as having spawned the 'sword and sorcery' genre. The Conan stories have since been adapted many times, most famously in the series of films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. show lessTags
Member Reviews
I recently read through a large part of Lovecraft's work. It was interesting seeing the first of what eventually became the Lovecraftian Mythos, but there were still some issues with it--Lovecraft wasn't really the best when it came to plot or character and was very much a product of his times.
If The Horror from the Mound is any indication, Howard took the feel of the world that Lovecraft had build and really built on it. The Horror from the Mound takes something that we've heard of a thousand times before (the vampire) and takes it in another direction. Well worth the read.
If you'd like to listen to the story, Pseudopod had an excellent recording on their 11 Aug 2016 release: Pseudopod 503: The Horror from the Mound.
On top of that, show more he created Conan and Solomon Kane? I'm going to have to read some more of his works. show less
If The Horror from the Mound is any indication, Howard took the feel of the world that Lovecraft had build and really built on it. The Horror from the Mound takes something that we've heard of a thousand times before (the vampire) and takes it in another direction. Well worth the read.
If you'd like to listen to the story, Pseudopod had an excellent recording on their 11 Aug 2016 release: Pseudopod 503: The Horror from the Mound.
On top of that, show more he created Conan and Solomon Kane? I'm going to have to read some more of his works. show less
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Author Information
1,895+ Works 32,085 Members
Robert E. Howard was born in Peaster, Texas on January 22, 1906. At the beginning of his writing career, he primarily wrote pulp fiction and had numerous stories published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales including Spear and Fang, The Hyena, Wolfshead, Red Shadows, and The Shadow Kingdom. He created the character of Conan the Barbarian in the show more pages of Weird Tales. By 1936, almost all of his fiction writing was in the western genre and his first novel, A Gent from Bear Creek, was about to be published. He committed suicide on June 11, 1936 at the age of 30. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Robert E. Howard has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Steve Brill; Juan Lopez; Hernando de Estrada; Juan Zavilla; Santiago de Valdez
- Important places
- Texas, USA; West Texas, USA
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Horror, Fantasy
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 14
- Popularity
- 1,676,437
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.86)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 1
- ASINs
- 2
