罗伯特·欧文·霍华德

罗伯特·欧文·霍华德（英语：Robert Ervin Howard，1906年1月22日—1936年6月11日），美国著名作家，被誉为“剑与魔法小说之父”，代表作为《蛮王柯南》。

生平

1906年出生在美国得克萨斯州帕克县，他是内科医生艾萨克·霍华德和海丝特·简·欧文·霍华德的唯一儿子。

霍华德的早年跟着家庭在得克萨斯州的各大新兴城市搬来搬去。

霍华德青年时期，家庭矛盾逐步上升，父亲和母亲经常吵架，他的父亲艾萨克·霍华德因为投资而成为富翁，而他的母亲认为自己已经配不上这个迷失的富豪。

霍华德的母亲对霍华德一生影响深远。他母亲虽然患有肺结核，但是仍旧天天为霍华德朗诵诗歌和美丽的文章，并且支持他的写作事业。

受到母亲的耳濡目染，霍华德喜欢阅读和写作，经常写作散文，并且对学校循规蹈矩的教育模式感到强烈的不满。而父亲在农场和牧场经营则带给他一个强悍的男人形象，并且深入到了他以后的创作中，例如“蛮王柯南”。

母亲病逝后，霍华德自杀了。

风格

霍华德的作品分为恐怖小说、冒险小说和奇幻小说。他的作品受到北欧神话和阿拉伯神话的强烈影响，节奏迅速，情节富有激情，多数作品被改编成漫画、电影、电视剧。代表作《蛮王柯南》在1981年由阿诺德·施瓦辛格出演，一时轰动全美。其代表作还有《女王神剑》、《所罗门凯恩》和《布兰麦克蒙》。

作品

《蛮王柯南》，Conan the Barbarian，中国青年出版社，2011年，翻译：谢图安，马晓佳，任元琦，ISBN 9787515300771。

《女王神剑》，Red Sonja。

《所罗门凯恩》，Solomon Kane。

《布兰麦克蒙》，Bran Mak Morn。

Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American author, known for writing pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He created the character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre.

Howard was born and raised in Texas. He spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains, with some time spent in nearby Brownwood. A bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of boxing, eventually taking up amateur boxing; he also spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding. From the age of nine, he wanted to become an adventure fiction writer but did not have real success until he was 23. Thereafter Howard's writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he became proficient in several subgenres. He died by suicide at age 30 while distraught over his mother's imminent death.

Although a Conan novel was nearly published in 1934, Howard's stories were never collected during his lifetime. The main outlet for his stories was Weird Tales, where Howard created Conan the Barbarian. It was only after his death that his writings were collected and more widely read. With Conan and his other heroes, Howard helped create the sword and sorcery genre, spawning many imitators and giving him a large influence in the fantasy field.

Biography

Early years

Howard was born January 22, 1906, in Peaster, Texas, the only son of a traveling country physician, Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard, and his wife, Hester Jane Ervin Howard. His early life was spent wandering through a variety of Texas cowtowns and boomtowns: Dark Valley (1906), Seminole (1908), Bronte (1909), Poteet (1910), Oran (1912), Wichita Falls (1913), Bagwell (1913), Cross Cut (1915), and Burkett (1917).

His parents' relationship began to break down during his youth. The Howard family had problems with money, which might have been exacerbated by Isaac Howard investing in get-rich-quick schemes. Hester Howard, meanwhile, came to believe that she had married below herself. Soon, the pair were actively fighting. Hester did not want Isaac to have anything to do with their son. She had a particularly strong influence on her son's intellectual growth. She had spent her early years helping a variety of sick relatives, contracting tuberculosis in the process. She instilled in her son a deep love of poetry and literature, recited verse daily, and supported him unceasingly in his efforts to write.

Although he loved reading and learning, he found school to be confining and began to resent authority. Experiences watching and confronting bullies revealed the omnipresence of evil and enemies in the world, and taught him the value of physical strength and violence. As the son of the local doctor, Howard had frequent exposure to the effects of injury and violence, due to accidents on farms and oil fields combined with increasing crime rates from the oil boom. Firsthand tales of gunfights, lynchings, feuds, and Indian raids developed his distinctly Texan, hardboiled outlook on the world. Sports, especially boxing, became a passionate preoccupation. At the time, boxing was the most popular sport in the country, with a cultural influence far in excess of what it is today. James J. Jeffries, Jack Johnson, Bob Fitzsimmons, and later Jack Dempsey were the names that inspired him during those years, and he grew up a lover of all contests of violent, masculine struggle.