These themes crop up often in REH’s oeuvre, in the travels of Solomon Kane, in the knife’s-edge maneuverings of Francis Xavier Gordon, and in the determined resistance of Bran Mak Morn. They span the breadth of the Middle Ages – from war-torn eleventh-century Ireland ( Spears of Clontarf) to sixteenth-century Ottoman Crimea ( The Road of the Eagles) – and they explore a similar theme, what Howard called his “continual search for newer barbarians, from age to age.” The violent clash of civilizations and its tragic consequences fascinated Howard, as did the stoic heroism that arises in the face of inescapable doom. These stories rank among REH’s finest – lean and descriptive, with headlong plots and a rogues’ gallery of characters who embody the kind of grim fatalism that has become a hallmark of his work. And indeed, Howard’s zest, his passion, is evident in every detail and turn of phrase. “There is no literary work, to me, half as zestful as rewriting history in the guise of fiction,” he commented in a letter to H. Who can read Black Colossus, for instance, and not see the shadow of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the plight of the tiny city-state of Khoraja? Does not the blood-feud in Red Nails echo the equally bloody Lincoln County War? Such parallels abound in Howard’s fiction – some tenuous, others flare-bright and obvious. With this in mind, it’s relatively easy to make the case that even Howard’s non-historical writings, his tales of Conan of Cimmeria or Kull of Atlantis, are at heart historical fiction. Indeed, a love of times past ran deep in Howard’s veins a survey of his correspondence reveals that virtually every letter between 19 makes some mention of his interest in things historical – from the Celtic migrations to the lives of local gunfighters. #Conan witchfire standing torch professionalThough his professional career spanned but a little more than a decade, he wrote, by conservative estimate, some three million words of poetry and prose, much of it having an historical slant.
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