Boxing Stories (The Works of Robert E. Howard)
by Robert E. Howard 
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Description
Although he is best known as the creator of Conan the Barbarian and as a writer of historical fiction and fantasy, Robert E. Howard was both a successful author of popular boxing stories and an avid amateur boxer himself. The sixteen stories and three poems collected in this volume show the full range of his talents for action, humor, and fistic philosophy. Ten of the stories feature the sailor Steve Costigan, a lovable, hard-fisted, and innocent semipro pugilist, who takes on dastardly show more villains in exotic ports of call. Howard's brilliant blue-collar humor belies his preoccupation with the real-life issues near and dear to his heart--death, honor, pride, and a man's love for his dog Other stories are more dramatic and somber, including "Iron Men," which Howard called "the best fight story I ever wrote--in many ways the best story of any kind I ever wrote." Severely edited and truncated for its original publication in 1930 in Fight Stories magazine, the tale has never been published in its original form--until now. It appears here, completely restored from Howard's original typescript, in an authoritative version that Howard fans everywhere will appreciate. In these stories Howard created a realistic, richly populated boxing universe, with intertwining characters and histories that carry on from tale to tale. With them he takes his place in a tradition of American boxing writers but always with a uniquely Howardian twist, a gritty brooding atmosphere, and a reserve of humor that captures the often brutal ambiance of the 1930s. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
This is a top-notch collection of Robert E. Howard's boxing fiction. It features all of Howard's ability to capture brutal combat, and many of the stories feature his sense of humor. I liked the way many of the stories referenced characters from other stories, as though they all lived in the same universe and were not just one-shots.
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Author Information
1,892+ Works 32,139 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.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Historical Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 813.54 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999
- LCC
- PS3515 .O842 .A6 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 1900-1960
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 54
- Popularity
- 562,991
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.10)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
