by Gary Romeo
The Robert E. Howard Foundation published The Collected Letters of Doctor Isaac M. Howard in 2011. This is an extremely interesting book for those interested in learning about Robert E. Howard, his family, and his legacy.
The book includes letters from Weird Tales editor, Farnsworth Wright to Robert E. Howard, as well as letters from August Derleth, Otis Adelbert Kline, and others. Most interesting are the newspaper articles on Robert E. Howard’s suicide and the many letters written by Doctor Howard after REH’s passing.
One of the first things Doc Howard did to establish a legacy for his son was to donate Robert E. Howard’s magazine publications and personal books to the Howard Payne College in Brownwood. This became known as “The Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection.
In a letter to E. Hoffmann Price dated June 27, 1936, Doc Howard writes: “I gave Robert’s books and all of the magazines that contained his stories to Howard Payne College at Brownwood. They asked me for them and it will be known as the Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection. It is arranged in such a way that from this small collection it can be builded as much as Robert’s friends may see fit to build it; therefore, if you should have a book that you would like to contribute to the collection, it will contain a sticker showing that it belongs to this collection, and you may autograph the same. You knowing Robert so well, and the different topics and subjects he was interested in, you could make an ideal selection should you care to send a book.” (Price sent Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition by Raphael Sabatini.) Doc Howard may have been surprised by the book as “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” 🙂
Doc Howard continued his pursuit of items for the Memorial Collection writing H. P. Lovecraft: “The Howard Payne College of Brownwood has asked for letters from correspondents. If it is agreeable to you, I will furnish them with some of your correspondence to him as he has some in his files and they are interested in letters.”
Farnsworth Wright is known to have donated a copy of A. G. Birch’s The Moon Terror.
You can read these various letters in the Collected Letters book. I came across a letter that is NOT in this book. In the letter, Doc Howard thanks Jack Williamson for a letter and book he donated to the collection.
Jack Williamson is not a writer usually associated with Robert E. Howard. Williamson was a fellow Weird Tales contributor though. (I believe “The Wand of Doom” in the October 1932 issue was his first appearance in “The Unique Magazine.”) Williamson’s most lasting book is probably Darker Than You Think. It was originally published in Unknown in 1940 and was later expanded into a novel published by Fantasy Press in 1948. Catherine Crook de Camp reviewed the novel in the October 1949 issue of Astounding.
Darker Than You Think achieved a certain level of pop-culture fame when it was mentioned on the Strange Angel TV show that premiered on June 14, 2018, on CBS All Access. The series was based on the biography of Jack Parsons, a rocket scientist who dabbled in the occult and became involved with L. Ron Hubbard. Parsons was a huge fan of Jack Williamson.
This article was part Doc Howard and part Jack Williamson. Hopefully it was ALL interesting!
spraguedecampfan 
Sounds like Dr. Howard did a lot for Robert posthumously, though I read somewhere he felt he didn’t really know his son.
It’s true! He was constantly having to ask his wife to remind him who that kid in the second bedroom was…