title: Catherine Tresa

text: She has acted in successful films such as "Godfather" (2012), "Madras" (2014), "Sarrainodu" (2016), "Nene Raju Nene Mantri" (2017), "Kalakalappu 2" (2018).


title: Catherine Tresa

text: Catherine Tresa was born to Malayali parents, Frank Mario Alexander and Tresa Alexander in Dubai. She was born as a Christian. She did her Class 12 in Dubai and moved to Bangalore for higher education. While studying, she learnt to play piano, and got trained in singing, dancing, ice skating and debating, stating that she believes that she is "good at anything I put my mind to". In Dubai, Catherine was an Emirates Environment volunteer. At the age of 14, Catherine did some amateur modelling for fashion design graduate students. After coming to India, she modeled for Nalli Silks, Chennai Silks, Fast Track, Josco Jewellers and Deccan Chronicle. She has also shot for Srikantadatta Wodeyar's Maharaja Calendar and had participated with Prasad Bidapa in numerous ramp shows across India.


title: Catherine Tresa

text: Catherine made her acting debut in 2010 Kannada film "Shankar IPS" opposite Duniya Vijay. Catherine went on to act in the Malayalam films, "The Thriller" and "". In 2011, she did a role in the Kannada film "Vishnu" that she said was "equally opposite to her real life".


title: Catherine Tresa

text: It was followed by the Kannada film "Godfather" opposite Upendra, which was directed by cinematographer turned film-maker Sethu Sriram. Catherine's character in the film was that of an older mentally challenged woman. Her performance earned her her first nomination for an award in the Best Supporting Actress category at the 60th Filmfare Awards South.


title: Catherine Tresa

text: She next signed up for "Chammak Challo" directed by Neelakanta, in which she played "an urbane, bold and dynamic girl". It released in February 2013 and failed at the box office, but she got noticed and received positive reviews. APHerald.com called her "a treat to watch" and 123telugu.com noted that "she has the potential to be a superstar in future if she plays her cards right".


title: Catherine Tresa

text: Catherine played one of the female leads in Puri Jagannadh's Telugu film "Iddarammayilatho". The film released in June 2013 and won her rave reviews. Times of India reported "Catherine Tresa perfectly suits the character of Akanksha". Shirirag.com called her "cigarette smoking hot" while Idlebrain Jeevi in his review noted "with a bit of fine-tuning she can become big in Telugu films".


title: Catherine Tresa

text: Catherine next appeared in "Paisa" by Krishna Vamsi playing a Muslim in the film, "who is sweet, very inhibited and talks a lot with her eyes" and called it "a total contrast to what I play[ed] in "Chammak Challo"". In 2014, she made her foray into the Tamil film industry with "Madras" in which she starred opposite Karthi. The second Tamil film is the S Thanu production, "Kanithan" directed by débutante Santosh in which she will be starring opposite Atharvaa. She then appeared in two Telugu films: Gunasekhar's "Rudhramadevi", the first Indian 3D historic film, and "Erra Bus", directed and produced by Dasari Narayana Rao.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906June 11, 1936) was an American writer. He wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: 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 and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding, eventually taking up amateur boxing. From the age of nine he dreamed of becoming a writer of adventure fiction but did not have real success until he was 23. Thereafter, until his death by suicide at age 30, Howard's writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he became proficient in several subgenres. His greatest success occurred after his death.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: 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. With Conan and his other heroes, Howard helped fashion the genre now known as sword and sorcery, spawning many imitators and giving him a large influence in the fantasy field. Howard remains a highly read author, with his best works still reprinted, and is one of the best-selling fantasy writers of all time.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard's suicide and the circumstances surrounding it have led to speculation about his mental health. His mother had been ill with tuberculosis her entire life, and upon learning she had entered a coma from which she was not expected to wake, he walked out to his car and shot himself in the head.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: 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).


title: Robert E. Howard

text: During Howard's youth his parents' relationship began to break down. The Howard family had problems with money which may 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.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Other experiences would later seep into his prose. Although he loved reading and learning, he found school to be confining and began to hate having anyone in authority over him. 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 the massive increase in crime that came with 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 during those years, and he grew up a lover of all contests of violent, masculine struggle.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Voracious reading, along with a natural talent for prose writing and the encouragement of teachers, created in Howard an interest in becoming a professional writer. From the age of nine he began writing stories, mostly tales of historical fiction centering on Vikings, Arabs, battles, and bloodshed. One by one he discovered the authors who would influence his later work: Jack London and his stories of reincarnation and past lives, most notably "The Star Rover" (1915); Rudyard Kipling's tales of subcontinent adventures; the classic mythological tales collected by Thomas Bulfinch. Howard was considered by friends to be eidetic, and astounded them with his ability to memorize lengthy reams of poetry with ease after one or two readings.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In 1919, when Howard was thirteen, Dr. Howard moved his family to the Central Texas hamlet of Cross Plains, and there the family would stay for the rest of Howard's life. Howard's father bought a house in the town with a cash down payment and made extensive renovations. That same year, sitting in a library in New Orleans while his father took medical courses at a nearby college, Howard discovered a book concerned with the scant fact and abundant legends surrounding an indigenous culture in ancient Scotland called the Picts.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In 1920, on February 17, the Vestal Well within the limits of Cross Plains struck oil and Cross Plains became an oil boomtown. Thousands of people arrived in the town looking for oil wealth. New businesses sprang up from scratch and the crime rate increased to match. Cross Plains' population quickly grew from 1,500 to 10,000, it suffered overcrowding, the traffic ruined its unpaved roads and vice crime exploded but it also used its new wealth on civic improvements, including a new school, an ice manufacturing plant, and new hotels. Howard hated the boom and despised the people who came with it. He was already poorly disposed towards oil booms as they were the cause of the constant traveling in his early years but this was aggravated by what he perceived to be the effect oil booms had on towns.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: At fifteen Howard first sampled pulp magazines, especially "Adventure" and its star authors Talbot Mundy and Harold Lamb. The next few years saw him creating a variety of series characters. Soon he was submitting stories to magazines such as "Adventure" and "Argosy". Rejections piled up, and with no mentors or instructions of any kind to aid him, Howard became a writing autodidact, methodically studying the markets and tailoring his stories and style to each.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In the fall of 1922, when Howard was sixteen, he temporarily moved to a boarding house in the nearby city of Brownwood to complete his senior year of high school, accompanied by his mother. It was in Brownwood that he first met friends his own age who shared his interest not only for sports and history but also writing and poetry. The two most important of these, Tevis Clyde Smith and Truett Vinson, shared his Bohemian and literary outlook on life, and together they wrote amateur papers and magazines, exchanged long letters filled with poetry and existential thoughts on life and philosophy, and encouraged each other's writing endeavors. Through Vinson, Howard was introduced to "The Tattler", the newspaper of the Brownwood High School. It was in this publication that Howard's stories were first printed. The December 1922 issue featured two stories, "'Golden Hope Christmas" and "West is West," which won gold and silver prizes respectively.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard graduated from high school in May 1923 and moved back to Cross Plains. On his return to his home town, he engaged in a self-created regimen of exercise, including cutting down oak trees and chopping them into firewood every day, lifting weights, punching a bag and springing exercises; eventually building himself from a skinny teenager into a more muscled, burly form.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard spent his late teens working odd jobs around Cross Plains, all of which he hated. In 1924, Howard returned to Brownwood to take a stenography course at Howard Payne College, this time boarding with his friend Lindsey Tyson instead of his mother. Howard would have preferred a literary course but was not allowed to take one for some reason. Biographer Mark Finn suggests that his father refused to pay for such a non-vocational education. In the week of Thanksgiving that year, and after years of rejection slips and near acceptances, he finally sold a short caveman tale titled "Spear and Fang", which netted him the sum of $16 and introduced him to the readers of a struggling pulp called "Weird Tales".


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Now that his career in fiction had begun, Howard dropped out of Howard Payne College at the end of the semester and returned to Cross Plains. Shortly afterwards, he received notice that another story, "The Hyena," had been accepted by "Weird Tales". During the same period, Howard made his first attempt to write a novel, a loosely autobiographical book modeled on Jack London's "Martin Eden" and titled "Post Oaks & Sand Roughs". The book was otherwise of middling quality and was never published in the author's lifetime, but it is of interest to Howard scholars for the personal information it contains. Howard's alter ego in this novel is Steve Costigan, a name he would use more than once in the future. The novel was finished in 1928, but not published until long after his death.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: "Weird Tales" paid on publication, meaning that Howard had no money of his own at this time. To remedy this, he took a job writing oil news for the local newspaper "Cross Plains Review" at $5 per column. It was not until July 1925 that Howard received payment for his first printed story. Howard lost his job at the newspaper in the same year and spent one month working in a post office before quitting over the low wages. His next job, at the Cross Plains Natural Gas Company, did not last long due to his refusal to be subservient to his boss. He did manual labor for a surveyor for a time before beginning a job as a stenographer for an oil company.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In conjunction with his friend Tevis Clyde Smith, he dabbled heavily in verse, writing hundreds of poems and getting dozens published in "Weird Tales" and assorted poetry journals. With poor sales, and many publishers recoiling from his subject matter, Howard ultimately judged poetry writing a luxury he could not afford, and after 1930 he wrote little verse, instead dedicating his time to short stories and higher-paying markets. Nevertheless, as a result of this apprenticeship, his stories increasingly took on the aura of "prose-poems" filled with hypnotic, dreamy imagery and a power lacking in most other pulp efforts of the time.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Further story sales to "Weird Tales" were sporadic but encouraging, and soon Howard was a regular in the magazine. His first cover story was for "Wolfshead", a werewolf story published when he was only twenty. On reading "Wolfshead" in "Weird Tales" Howard became dismayed with his writing. He quit his stenographer's job to work at Robertson's Drug Store, where he rose to become head soda jerk on $80 per week. However, he resented the job itself and worked such long hours every day of the week that he became ill. He relaxed by visiting the Neeb Ice House, to which he was introduced by an oil-field worker befriended at the drug store, to drink and began to take part in boxing matches. These matches became an important part of his life; the combination of boxing and writing provided an outlet for his frustrations and anger.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In August 1926, Howard quit his exhausting job at the drug store and, in September, returned to Brownwood to complete his bookkeeping course. It was during this August that he began working on the story that would become "The Shadow Kingdom", one of the most important works of his career. While at college, Howard wrote for their newspaper, "The Yellow Jacket". One of the short stories printed in this newspaper was a comedy called "Cupid vs. Pollux." This story is Howard's earliest surviving boxing story known to exist; it is told in the first person, uses elements of a traditional tall-tale and is a fictionalized account of Howard (as "Steve") and his friend Lindsey Tyson (as "Spike") training for a fight. This story and the elements it uses would also be important in Howard's literary future.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In May 1927, after having to return home due to contracting measles and then being forced to retake the course, Howard passed his exams. While waiting for the official graduation in August, he returned to writing, including a re-write of "The Shadow Kingdom." He rewrote it again in August and submitted it to "Weird Tales" in September. This story was an experiment with the entire concept of the "weird tale" horror fiction as defined by practitioners such as Edgar Allan Poe, A. Merritt, and H. P. Lovecraft, mixing elements of fantasy, horror and mythology with historical romance, action and swordplay into thematic vehicles never before seen, a new style of tale which ultimately became known as "sword and sorcery". Featuring Kull, a barbarian precursor to later Howard heroes such as Conan, the tale hit "Weird Tales" in August 1929 and received fanfare from readers. "Weird Tales" editor Farnsworth Wright bought the story for $100, the most Howard had earned for a story at this time, and several more Kull stories followed. However, all but two were rejected, convincing Howard not to continue the series.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In March 1928, Howard salvaged and re-submitted to "Weird Tales" a story rejected by the more popular pulp "Argosy", and the result was "Red Shadows", the first of many stories featuring the vengeful Puritan swashbuckler Solomon Kane. Appearing in the August 1928 issue of "Weird Tales", the character was a big hit with readers and this was the first of Howard's characters to sustain a series in print beyond just two stories (seven Kane stories were printed in the 1928–32 period). As the magazine published the Solomon Kane tale before Kull, this can be considered the first published example of sword and sorcery.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: 1929 was the year Howard broke out into other pulp markets, rather than just "Weird Tales". The first story he sold to another magazine was "The Apparition in the Prize Ring," a boxing-related ghost story published in the magazine "Ghost Stories". In July of the same year, "Argosy" finally published one of Howard's stories, "Crowd-Horror", which was also a boxing story. Neither developed into ongoing series, however.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: After several minor successes and false starts, he struck gold again with a new series based on one of his favorite passions: boxing. July 1929 saw the debut of Sailor Steve Costigan in the pages of "Fight Stories". A tough-as-nails, two-fisted mariner with a head of rocks and occasionally a heart of gold, Costigan began boxing his way through a variety of exotic seaports and adventure locales, becoming so popular in "Fight Stories" that the same editors began using additional Costigan episodes in their sister magazine "Action Stories". The series saw a return to Howard's use of humor and (unreliable) first-person narration, with the combination of a traditional tall tale and slapstick comedy. Stories sold to "Fight Stories" provided Howard with a market just as stable as "Weird Tales".


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Due to his success in "Fight Stories", Howard was contacted by the publisher Street & Smith in February 1931 with a request to move the Steve Costigan stories to their own pulp "Sport Story Magazine". Howard refused but created a new, similar series just for them based on a boxer called Kid Allison. Howard wrote ten stories for this series but "Sport Story" only published three of them.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: With solid markets now all buying up his stories regularly, Howard quit taking college classes, and indeed would never again work a regular job. At twenty-three years of age, from the middle of nowhere in Texas, he had become a full-time writer; he was making good money and his father began bragging about his success, not to mention buying multiple copies of his work in the pulps.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard's "Celtic phase" began in 1930, during which he became fascinated by Celtic themes and his own Irish ancestry. He shared this enthusiasm with Harold Preece, a friend made in Austin in the summer of 1927; Howard's letters to both Preece and Clyde Smith contain much Irish-related material and discussion. Howard taught himself a little Gaelic, examined the Irish parts of his family history and began writing about Irish characters. Turlogh Dubh O'Brien and Cormac Mac Art were created at this time, although he was not able to sell the latter's stories.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: When Farnsworth Wright started a new pulp in 1930 called "Oriental Stories", Howard was overjoyed—here was a venue where he could run riot through favorite themes of history and battle and exotic mysticism. During the four years of the magazine's existence, he crafted some of his very best tales, gloomy vignettes of war and rapine in the Middle and Far East during the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, tales that rival even his best Conan stories for their historical sweep and splendor. In addition to series characters such as Turlogh Dubh O'Brien and Cormac Fitzgeoffrey, Howard sold a variety of tales depicting various times and periods from the fall of Rome to the fifteenth century. The magazine eventually ceased publication in 1934 due to the Depression, leaving several of Howard's stories aimed at this market unsold.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In August 1930 Howard wrote a letter to "Weird Tales" praising a recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and discussing some of the obscure Gaelic references used within. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded warmly to Howard, and soon the two "Weird Tales" veterans were engaged in a vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. By virtue of this, Howard quickly became a member of the "Lovecraft Circle", a group of writers and friends all linked via the immense correspondence of H. P. Lovecraft (who wrote over 100,000 letters in his lifetime), who made it a point to introduce his many like-minded friends to one another and encourage them to share stories, utilize each other's invented fictional trappings, and help each other succeed in the pulp field. In time this circle of correspondents has developed a legendary patina about it rivaling similar literary conclaves such as The Inklings, the Bloomsbury Group, and the Beats.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard was given the affectionate nickname "Two-Gun Bob" by virtue of his long explications to Lovecraft about the history of his beloved Southwest, and during the ensuing years he contributed several notable elements to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos of horror stories (beginning with "The Black Stone", his Mythos stories also included "The Cairn on the Headland", "The Children of the Night" and "The Fire of Asshurbanipal"). He also corresponded with other "Weird Tale" writers such as Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, and E. Hoffmann Price.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: The correspondence between Howard and Lovecraft contained a lengthy discussion on a frequent element in Howard's fiction, barbarism versus civilization. Howard held that civilization was inherently corrupt and fragile. This attitude is summed up in his famous line from "Beyond the Black River": "Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph." Lovecraft held the opposite viewpoint, that civilization was the peak of human achievement and the only way forward. Howard countered by listing many historic abuses of the citizenry by so-called 'civilized' leaders. Howard initially deferred to Lovecraft but gradually asserted his own views, even coming to deride Lovecraft's opinions.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In 1930, with his interest in Solomon Kane dwindling and his Kull stories not catching on, Howard applied his new sword-and-sorcery and horror experience to one of his first loves: the Picts. His story "Kings of the Night" depicted King Kull conjured into pre-Christian Britain to aid the Picts in their struggle against the invading Romans, and introduced readers to Howard's king of the Picts, Bran Mak Morn. Howard followed up this tale with the now-classic revenge nightmare "Worms of the Earth" and several other tales, creating horrific adventures tinged with a Cthulhu-esque gloss and notable for their use of metaphor and symbolism.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: With the onset of the Great Depression, many pulp markets reduced their schedules or went out of business entirely. Howard saw market after market falter and vanish. "Weird Tales" became a bimonthly publication and pulps such as "Fight Stories", "Action Stories", and "Strange Tales" all folded. Howard was further hit when his savings were wiped out in 1931 when the Farmer's National Bank failed, and again, after transferring to another bank, when that one failed as well.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Early 1932 saw Howard taking one of his frequent trips around Texas. He traveled through the southern part of the state with his main occupation being, in his own words, "the wholesale consumption of tortillas, enchiladas and cheap Spanish wine." In Fredericksburg, while overlooking sullen hills through a misty rain, he conceived of the fantasy land of Cimmeria, a bitter hard northern region home to fearsome barbarians. In February, while in Mission, he wrote the poem "Cimmeria".


title: Robert E. Howard

text: It was also during this trip that Howard first conceived of the character of Conan. Later, in 1935, Howard claimed in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith that Conan "simply grew up in my mind a few years ago when I was stopping in a little border town on the lower Rio Grande." However, the character actually took nine months to develop.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard had originally used the name "Conan" for a Gael reaver in a past-life-themed story he completed in October 1931, which was published in the magazine "Strange Tales" in June 1932. Although the character swears by the god "Crom", that is his only link to the more famous successor character.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Going back home he developed the idea, fleshing out a new invented world—his Hyborian Age—and populating it with all manner of countries, peoples, monsters, and magic. Howard loved history and enjoyed writing historical stories. However, the research necessary for a purely historical setting was too time-consuming for him to engage in on a regular basis and still earn a living. The Hyborian Age, with its varied settings similar to real places and eras of history, allowed him to write pseudo-historical fiction without such problems. He may have been inspired in the creation of his setting by Thomas Bulfinch's 1913 edition of his "Bulfinch's Mythology" called "The Outline of Mythology", which contained stories from history and legend, including many which were direct influences on Howard's work. Another potential inspiration is G. K. Chesterton's "The Ballad of the White Horse" and Chesterton's concept that "it is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment."


title: Robert E. Howard

text: By March, Howard had recycled an unpublished Kull story called "By This Axe I Rule!" into his first Conan story. The central plot remains that of a barbarian having become king of a civilized country and a conspiracy to assassinate him. However, he removed an entire subplot concerning a couple's romance and created a new one with a supernatural element; the story was re-titled "The Phoenix on the Sword", an element from this new subplot. Howard immediately went on to write two more Conan stories. The first of these was "The Frost-Giant's Daughter", an inversion of the Greek myth surrounding Apollo and Daphne, set much earlier in Conan's life. The last of the initial trio was "The God in the Bowl", which went through three drafts and has a slower pace than most Conan stories. This one is a murder mystery filled with corrupt officials and serves as Conan's introduction into civilization, while showing that he is a more decent person than the civilized characters. Before the end of the month, he sent the first two stories to "Weird Tales" in the same package, with the third following a few days later.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: With these three completed he created an essay called "The Hyborian Age" in order to flesh out his setting in more detail. There were four drafts of this essay, starting with a two-page outline and finishing as an 8,000-word essay. Howard supplemented this with two sketched maps and an additional short piece entitled "Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age."


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In a letter dated March 10, 1932, Farnsworth Wright rejected "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" but noted that "The Phoenix on the Sword" had "points of real excellence" and suggested changes. "The God in the Bowl" would also be rejected and so a potential fourth Conan story concerning Conan as a thief was abandoned at the synopsis stage. Instead of abandoning the entire Conan concept, as had happened with previous failed characters, Howard rewrote "The Phoenix on the Sword" based on Wright's feedback and including material from his essay. Both this revision and the next Conan story, "The Tower of the Elephant", sold with no problems. Howard had written nine Conan stories before the first saw print.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Conan first appeared to the public in "Weird Tales" in December 1932 and was such a hit that Howard was eventually able to place seventeen Conan stories in the magazine between 1933 and 1936. Howard then took a short break from Conan after his initial burst of stories, returning to the character in mid-1933. These stories, his "middle period," are routine and considered the weakest of the series. Stories, such as "Iron Shadows in the Moon", were often simply Conan rescuing a damsel in distress from a monster in some ruins. While earlier Conan stories had three or four drafts, some in this period had only two including the final version. "Rogues in the House" is the only Conan story to be completed in a single draft. These stories sold easily and they include the first and second Conan stories to feature on the cover of "Weird Tales", "Black Colossus" and "Xuthal of the Dusk". Howard's motivation for quick and easy sales at this time was influenced by the collapse of some other markets, such as "Fight Stories", in the Depression.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Also in this period, Howard wrote the first of the James Allison stories, "Marchers of Valhalla." Allison is a disabled Texan who begins to recall his past lives, the first of which is in the later part of Howard's new Hyborian age. In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith in October 1933, he wrote that its sequel "The Garden of Fear" was "dealing with one of my various conceptions of the Hyborian and post-Hyborian world."


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In May 1933, a British publisher, Denis Archer, contacted Howard about publishing a book in the United Kingdom. Howard submitted a batch of his best available stories, including "The Tower of the Elephant" and "The Scarlet Citadel", on June 15. In January 1934 the publisher rejected the collection but suggested a novel instead. Though the publisher was "exceedingly interested" in the stories, the rejection letter explained that there was a "prejudice that is very strong over here just now against collections of short stories." The suggested novel, however, could be published by Pawling and Ness Ltd in a first edition of 5,000 copies for lending libraries.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In late 1933 Howard returned to Conan, starting again slightly awkwardly with "The Devil in Iron". However, this was followed with the beginning of the latter group of Conan stories which "carry the most intellectual punch," starting with "The People of the Black Circle".


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard probably began to work on the novel in February 1934, starting to write "Almuric" (a non-Conan, sword and planet science fiction novel) but abandoned it half way. This was followed by another abortive attempt at a novel, this time a Conan novel which later became "Drums of Tombalku". The third attempt at writing the novel was more successful, resulting in Howard's only Conan novel "The Hour of the Dragon", which was probably started on or around March 17, 1934. This novel combines elements of two previous Conan stories, "Black Colossus" and "The Scarlet Citadel," with Arthurian myth and provides an overview of Conan and the Hyborian age for the new British audience. Howard sent his final draft to Denis Archer on May 20, 1934. He had worked exclusively on the novel for two months, writing approximately 5,000 words per day, seven days a week. Although he told acquaintances that he had little hope for this novel, he had put a lot of effort into it. However, the publisher went into receivership in late 1934, before it could print the novel. The story was briefly held as part of the company's assets before being returned to Howard. It was later printed in "Weird Tales" as a serial over five months, beginning with the December 1935 issue.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard may have begun losing interest in Conan in late 1934, with a growing desire to write westerns. He began to write, although never finished, a Conan story called "Wolves Beyond the Border". This was the first Conan tale to have an explicit (Robert W. Chambers-influenced) American setting, although American themes had appeared earlier, and the only one in which Conan himself does not appear. His next story was based on his unfinished material and became "Beyond the Black River" which not only used the different American-frontier setting but was also, in Howard's own words, a "Conan yarn without sex interest." In another novel twist, Conan and the other protagonists have, at best, a pyrrhic victory; this was rare for pulp magazines. This was followed by another experimental Conan story, "The Black Stranger", with a similar setting. The story was, however, rejected by "Weird Tales", which was rare for later Conan stories. Howard's next piece, "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula", was more formulaic and was accepted by the magazine with no problems. Howard only wrote one more Conan story, "Red Nails," which was influenced both by his personal experiences at the time and an extrapolation of his views on civilization.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: The character of Conan had a wide and enduring influence among other "Weird Tales" writers, including C. L. Moore and Fritz Leiber, and over the ensuing decades the genre of sword and sorcery grew up around Howard's masterwork, with dozens of practitioners evoking Howard's creation to one degree or another.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In spring 1933, Howard started to place work with Otis Adelbert Kline, a former pulp writer, as his agent. Kline encouraged him to try writing in other genres in order to expand into different markets. Kline's agency was successful in finding outlets for more of Howard's stories and even placed works that had been rejected when Howard was marketing himself alone. Howard continued to sell directly to "Weird Tales", however.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard wrote one of the first "Weird Western" stories ever created, "The Horror from the Mound," published in the May 1932 issue of "Weird Tales". This genre acted as a bridge between his early "weird" stories (a contemporary term for horror and fantasy) and his later straight western tales.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: He tried writing detective fiction but hated reading mystery stories and disliked writing them; he was not successful in this genre. More successfully, in late 1933 Howard took a character conceived in his youth, El Borak, and began using him in mature, professional tales of World War I-era Middle Eastern adventure that landed in "Top Notch", "Complete Stories", and "Thrilling Adventures". The 1920s version was a treasure-hunting adventurer but the 1930s version, first seen in "The Daughter of Erlik Khan" in the December 1934 issue of "Top-Notch", was a grim gun-fighter keeping the peace after having gone native in Afghanistan. The stories have a lot in common with those of Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb and T. E. Lawrence, with Western themes and Howard's hardboiled style of writing. As with his other series, he created another character in the same vein, Kirby O'Donnell, but this character lacked the grim, western elements and was not as successful.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In the years since Conan had been created, Howard found himself increasingly fascinated with the history and lore of Texas and the American Southwest. Many of his letters to H. P. Lovecraft ran for a dozen pages or more, filled with stories he had picked up from elderly Civil War veterans, Texas Rangers, and pioneers. His Conan stories began featuring western elements, most notably in "Beyond the Black River", "The Black Stranger", and the unfinished "Wolves Beyond the Border". By 1934 some of the markets killed off by the Depression had come back, and "Weird Tales" was over $1500 behind on payments to Howard. The author therefore stopped writing weird fiction and turned his attentions to this steadily growing passion.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: The first of Howard's most commercially successful series (within his own lifetime) was started in July 1933. "Mountain Man" was the first of the Breckinridge Elkins stories, humorous westerns in a similar style to his earlier Sailor Steve Costigan stories and again featuring an exaggerated, cartoonish version of Howard himself as the main character. Written as tall tales in the vein of Texas "Tall Lying" stories, the story first appeared in the March–April 1934 issue of "Action Stories" and was so successful that other magazines asked Howard for similar characters. Howard created Pike Bearfield for "Argosy" and Buckner J. Grimes for "Cowboy Stories". "Action Stories" published a new Elkins story every issue without fail until well after Howard's death. At Kline's suggestion, he also created "A Gent from Bear Creek", a Breckinridge Elkins novel comprising existing short stories and new material.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Conan remained the only character that Howard ever spoke of with his friends in Texas and the only one in whom they seemed interested. It is possible that Breckinridge Elkins and the other characters in his stories were too close to home for Howard to be entirely comfortable discussing them.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In the spring of 1936, Howard sold a series of "spicy" stories to "Spicy-Adventure Stories". The "spicy" series of pulp magazines dealt in stories that were considered borderline softcore pornography at the time but are now similar to romance novels. These stories, which Howard referred to as "bubby-twisters", featured the character Wild Bill Clanton and were published under the pseudonym Sam Walser.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard is only known to have had one girlfriend in his life, Novalyne Price. Price was an ex-girlfriend of Tevis Clyde Smith, one of Howard's best friends, whom she had known since high school and they had remained friends after their relationship ended. She first met Howard in spring 1933 when Howard was visiting Smith after driving his mother to a Brownwood clinic. Howard and Smith drove to the Price farm and Smith introduced his friends to each other. Price was an aspiring writer, had heard of Howard from Smith in the past and was enthusiastic to meet him in person. However, he was not what she expected. She wrote in her diary about this first meeting: "This man was a writer! Him? It was unbelievable. He was not dressed as I thought a writer should dress." They parted after a drive and would not see each other again for over a year.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In late 1934 Price got a job as a schoolteacher in Cross Plains High School through her cousin, the Head of the English department. When Howard came up in conversation with her new colleagues she defended him from accusations of being a "freak" and "crazy," then phoned his house and left a message. This call was not returned so she tried a few more times. Price visited the Howard house in person after having her telephone calls blocked by a passive-aggressive Hester Howard. After a drive through town they arranged their first date.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Through much of the next two years they dated on and off, spending much time discussing writing, philosophy, history, religion, reincarnation and much else. Both considered marriage but never at the same time. Price became ill from overwork in mid-1935. Her doctor, a friend of Howard's father, advised her to end the relationship and get a job in a different state. Despite agreeing to this, she met with Howard soon after being discharged. Howard, however, was too preoccupied with the state of his mother's health to give her the attention she wanted. Their relationship did not last much longer.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Not considering herself to be in an exclusive relationship, Price began dating one of Howard's best friends, Truett Vinson. Howard discovered his friends' relationship while he and Truett were on a week's trip together to New Mexico (the same trip which inspired a lot of the final Conan story "Red Nails"). The relationship between the couple was irrevocably scarred, but they continued visiting with each other as friends until May 1936, when Price left Cross Plains for Louisiana State University to get a graduate degree. The two never spoke or wrote to each other again.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In an effort to improve her memory and writing, Price began recording all her daily conversations into a journal, in the process preserving an intimate record of her time with Howard. This was useful years later when she wrote of their relationship in a book called "One Who Walked Alone", which was the basis for the 1996 film "The Whole Wide World" starring Vincent D'Onofrio as Howard and Renée Zellweger as Price.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: By 1936, almost all of Howard's fiction writing was being devoted to westerns. The novel "A Gent from Bear Creek" was due to be published by Herbert Jenkins in England, and by all accounts it looked as if he was finally breaking out of the pulps and into the more prestigious book market. However, life was becoming especially difficult for Howard. All of his close friends had married and were immersed in their careers, Novalyne Price had left Cross Plains for graduate school, and his most reliable market, "Weird Tales", had grown far behind on its payments. His home life was also falling apart. Having suffered from tuberculosis for decades, his mother was finally nearing death. The constant interruptions of care workers at home, combined with frequent trips to various sanatoriums for her care, made it nearly impossible for Howard to write.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In hindsight, there were hints about Howard's plans. Several times in 1935–36, whenever his mother's health had declined, he made veiled allusions to his father about planning suicide, which his father did not understand at the time. He had made references when speaking to Novalyne Price about being in his "sere and yellow leaf". The words sounded familiar to her, but it was only in early June 1936 that she found the source in "Macbeth":


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In the weeks before his suicide, Howard wrote to Kline giving his agent instructions of what to do in case of his death, he wrote his last will and testament, and he borrowed a .380 Colt Automatic from his friend Lindsey Tyson. On June 10, he drove to Brownwood and bought a burial plot for the whole family. On the night before his suicide, when his father confirmed that his mother was finally dying, he asked where his father would go afterwards. Isaac Howard replied that he would go wherever his son went, thinking he meant to leave Cross Plains. It is possible that Howard thought his father would join him in ending their lives together as a family.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In June 1936, as Hester Howard slipped into her final coma, her son maintained a death vigil with his father and friends of the family, getting little sleep, drinking huge amounts of coffee, and growing more despondent. On the morning of June 11, 1936, Howard asked one of his mother's nurses, a Mrs. Green, if his mother would ever regain consciousness. When she told him no, he walked out to his car in the driveway, took the pistol from the glove box, and shot himself in the head. His father and another doctor rushed out, but the wound was too grievous for anything to be done. Howard lived for another eight hours, dying at 4 pm; his mother died the following day. The story occupied the entirety of that week's edition of the "Cross Plains Review", along with the publication of Howard's "A Man-Eating Jeopard". On June 14, 1936, a double funeral service was held at Cross Plains First Baptist Church, and both were buried in Greenleaf Cemetery in Brownwood, Texas.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Robert E. Howard's health, especially his mental health, has been the focus of the biographical and critical analysis of his life. In terms of physical health, Howard had a weak heart, which he treated by taking Digoxin. The precise nature of Howard's mental health has been much debated, both during his life and following his suicide. Three main points of view exist: some have declared that Howard suffered from an Oedipal complex or similar; another viewpoint is that Howard suffered from major depressive disorder; the third view is that Howard had no disorders and his suicide was a common reaction to stress.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard's attitude towards race and racism is debated. Howard used race as shorthand for physical characteristics and motivation. He would also employ some racial stereotypes, possibly for the sake of simplification. He was also of the belief that, no matter who won the subsequent conflicts, it would only ever be a temporary victory. In "Wings in the Night", for instance, Howard writes that:


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard became less racist as he grew older, due to several influences. Later works include more sympathetic black characters, as well as other minority groups, such as Jews. Significant works in terms of Howard's views on race are "Black Canaan" and "The Last White Man", which depict white protagonists at war with black characters defined by barbarity.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard had feminist views, despite his era and location, which he espoused in both personal and professional life. Howard wrote to his friends and associates defending the achievements and capabilities of women. Strong female characters in Howard's works of fiction include the protofeminist Dark Agnes de Chastillon (first appearing in "Sword Woman", circa 1932–1934); the early modern pirate Helen Tavrel ("The Isle of Pirates' Doom", 1928), two pirates and Conan supporting characters, Bêlit ("Queen of the Black Coast", 1934) and Valeria of the Red Brotherhood ("Red Nails", 1936); as well as the Ukrainian mercenary Red Sonya of Rogatino ("The Shadow of the Vulture", 1934).


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard had a phobia of aging and old age, a frequent subject in his writings, where characters were always eternally youthful and vigorous. He often spoke of a desire to die young.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Physically, Howard was tall and heavily built. He had a gentle, round face with a soft, deep voice. E. Hoffmann Price wrote that when he first met Howard in 1934 he "was busy trying to combine two images, that of the actual man, and that of the man who loomed up in those stirring yarns. The synthesis was never effected. He was packed with the whimsy and poetry which rang out in his letters, and blazed up in much of his published fiction, but, as is usually the case with writers, his appearance belied him. His face was boyish, not yet having squared off into angles; his blue eyes slightly prominent, had a wide-openness which did not suggest anything of the man's keen wit and agile fancy. That first picture persists—a powerful, solid, round-faced fellow, kindly and somewhat stolid seeming."


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard enjoyed listening to other people's stories. He listened to tales told by family members growing up and, as an adult, collected stories from any older people willing to tell them. Howard's parents were both natural storytellers of different kinds and he grew up in early twentieth century Texas, an environment in which the telling of tall tales was a standard form of entertainment. Howard himself was a natural storyteller and later a professional storyteller. Combined, this often led to Howard embellishing facts in his communication, not with an intention to deceive but just to make a better story. This can be a problem for biographers reading his works and letters with an aim to understand Howard himself.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard had an almost photographic memory and could memorize long poems after only a few readings. Howard also enjoyed listening to music and drama on the radio. However his main interests were sports and politics, and he would listen to match reports and election results as they came in.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: After Howard bought a car in 1932, he and his friends took regular excursions across Texas and nearby states. His letters to Lovecraft also contain information about the history and geography he encountered on his journeys. Howard was also a practitioner and fan of boxing, as well as an avid weightlifter.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard's first published poem was "", in an early 1923 issue of local newspaper "The Baylor United Statement". His first published story was "Spear and Fang", sold in late November 1924 and published in the July 1925 issue of the pulp magazine "Weird Tales". However, Howard's first real success was the Sailor Steve Costigan series of humorous boxing stories, beginning with "The Pit of the Serpent" published in the July 1929 issue of the pulp magazine "Fight Stories".


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard's distinctive literary style relies on a combination of existentialism, poetic lyricism, violence, grimness, humour, burlesque, and a degree of hardboiled realism. Howard's background in Texan tall tales is the source of the rhythm, drive and authenticity of his work. Howard used an economy of words to sketch out scenes in his stories; his ability to do so has been attributed to his skill with, and experience of, both tall tales and poetry. The tone of Howard's works, especially in the Conan stories, is hardboiled and dark. This is contrasted with the fantastic elements contained within the stories. Direct experience of the oil booms in early twentieth-century Texas influenced Howard's view of civilization. The benefits of progress came with lawlessness and corruption. One of the most common themes in Howard's writing is based on his view of history, a repeating pattern of civilizations reaching their peak, becoming decadent, decaying and then being conquered by another people. Many of his works are set in the period of decay or among the ruins the dead civilization leaves behind.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: The oil boom in Texas was "one of the most powerful influences on [Howard's] life and art", albeit one that he hated. Howard grew to despise the oil industry along with everyone and everything associated with it. The oil boom heavily influenced Howard's view of civilization as a constant cycle of boom and bust in the same manner as the oil industry in contemporary Texas. A town such as Cross Plains was built by pioneers. The boom brought civilization in the form of people and investment but also social breakdown. The oil people contributed little or nothing to the town in the long term and eventually left for the next oil field. This led Howard to see civilization as corrupting and society as a whole in decay.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard first bought a pulp magazine, a copy of "Adventure", when he was fifteen. The stories and writers featured in this magazine were a strong influence on Howard. In the same year, he sent his first story, "Bill Smalley and the Power of the Human Eye", to the magazine, although it was rejected. Despite repeated attempts during his life, Howard never sold a story to "Adventure".


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard was both influenced by and an influence on his friend H. P Lovecraft. Many ideas that he discussed in his letters to Lovecraft were repeated in his fiction and the discussion with a fellow professional writer was useful to him. For his part, Lovecraft began to include Howardian action sequences in his own work, for example in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". Much of 1931 was spent by Howard attempting to mimic Lovecraft's style. After that year, he had absorbed the parts of it that worked best for him and made them his own.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Another inspiration for Howard was theosophy and the theories of Helena Blavatsky and William Scott-Elliot, who described lost civilizations, ancient wisdom, races, magic and sunken continents and the lands of Lemuria, Atlantis and Hyperborea, and also influenced other writers of weird fiction.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard influenced and inspired later writers including Samuel R. Delany, David Gemmell, Michael Moorcock, Matthew Woodring Stover, Charles R. Saunders, Karl Edward Wagner, Paul Kearney, Steven Erikson, Joe R. Lansdale, and William King. He also has an influence on the field of fantasy fiction rivaled only by J. R. R. Tolkien and Tolkien's similarly inspired creation of the modern genre of high fantasy.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Criticism of Robert E. Howard and his work often turns towards biographical details and "backhanded Some imply that Howard was an uneducated idiot savant and that his success was due more to luck than skill.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: The first professional critic to comment on Howard's work was Hoffman Reynolds Hays, reviewing the Arkham House collection "Skull-Face and Others" in "The New York Times Book Review". Under the title "Superman on a Psychotic Bender", Hays wrote, "Howard used a good deal of the Lovecraft cosmogony and demonology, but his own contribution was a sadistic conqueror who, when cracking heads did not solve his difficulties, had recourse to magic and the aid of Lovecraft's Elder Gods. The stories are written on a competent pulp level (a higher level, by the way, than that of some best sellers) and are allied to the Superman genre which pours forth in countless comic books and radio serials." Hays then moved on to Howard himself and the genre in which he wrote:


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In a review of Michel Houellebecq's essay "H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" published in the "Los Angeles Times", April 17, 2005, Stephen King implies that Howard did not work at his craft and was merely pastiching Lovecraft. King described his disapproval of the sword and sorcery genre, and superheroes, in his book on writing "Danse Macabre": "[It] is not fantasy at its lowest, but it still has a pretty tacky feel. ... Sword and sorcery novels and stories are tales of power for the powerless. The fellow who is afraid of being rousted by those young punks who hang around his bus stop can go home at night and imagine himself wielding a sword, his potbelly miraculously gone, his slack muscles magically transmuted into those "iron thews" which have been sung and storied in the pulps for the last fifty years." On Howard in particular, he wrote:


title: Robert E. Howard

text: An exception to this, in King's opinion (again from "Danse Macabre") was the author's Southern Gothic horror story "Pigeons From Hell." King referred to this work as "one of the finest horror stories of our century."


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In the foreword to "Two-Gun Bob", a collection of essays on the subject of Howard, fellow fantasy fiction writer, Michael Moorcock, wrote: "The ability to paint a complex scene with a few expert brushstrokes remains Howard's greatest talent, and such talent can't, of course, ever be taught." Howard scholar Rob Roehm considers the use of the phrase "can't ever be taught" to be a variation on the recurrent theme of Howard's lack of skill or training. Moorcock's foreword goes on "[Howard's] greatest hero, Conan the Barbarian, is his best, created from whole cloth, with a nod to Natty Bumppo and Tarzan of the Apes, and most closely representing the kind of person Howard, home-bound, mother-worshipping, suspicious of big cities, would in his dreams most like to be." Roehm counters that none of the assertions made about Howard in that comment are true, although none of them are unique to Moorcock either. In "Wizardry & Wild Romance", Moorcock has also written both that Howard "brought a brash, tough element to the epic fantasy that did as much to change the course of the American school away from previous writing and static imagery as Hammett, Chandler and the "Black Mask" pulp writers were to change the course of the American detective fiction" and that he "was never a commercially successful writer in his lifetime. His brash, hasty, careless style did not lend itself to the classier pulps. Most of his work appeared in the cheapest of them."


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi wrote, in his biography "", that "The bulk of Howard's fiction is subliterary hackwork that does not even begin to approach genuine literature" and "The simple fact is, however, that his views are not of any great substance or profundity and that Howard's style is crude, slip-shod, and unwieldy. It is all just pulp—although, perhaps, a somewhat superior grade of pulp than the average."


title: Robert E. Howard

text: The following table shows Howard's earnings from writing throughout his career, with appropriate milestones and events noted by each year. During the Depression, Howard earned more than anyone else in Cross Plains. When Howard died, "Weird Tales" still owed him between $800 and $1,300. (Adjusted for inflation, this amount would be equivalent to between $ and $.)


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Three publishing houses have put out collections of Howard's letters. In 1989 and 1991, Necronomicon Press published "Robert E. Howard: Selected Letters" in two volumes (1923–1930 and 1931–1936) edited by Glenn Lord with Rusty Burke, S. T. Joshi, and Steve Behrends. In 2007 and 2008, The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press published a three volume set (1923–1929, 1930–1932, and 1933–1936) titled "The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard", edited by Rob Roehm. Additionally, in 2009, Hippocampus Press published two volumes (1930–1932 and 1933–1936) of Howard's correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft as "A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft & Robert E. Howard", edited by S. T. Joshi, David Schultz, and Rusty Burke.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Robert E. Howard's legacy extended after his death in 1936. Howard's most famous character, Conan the Barbarian, has a pop-culture imprint that has been compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond. Howard's critical reputation suffered at first but over the decades works of Howard scholarship have been published. The first professionally published example of this was L. Sprague de Camp's "Dark Valley Destiny" (1983) which was followed by other works, including Don Herron's "The Dark Barbarian" (1984) and Mark Finn's "" (2006). Also in 2006, a charity, Robert E. Howard Foundation, was created to promote further scholarship.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Following Robert E. Howard's death, the courts granted his estate to his father, who continued to work with Howard's literary agent Otis Adelbert Kline. Dr. Isaac Howard passed the rights on to his friend Dr. Pere Kuykendall, who passed them to his wife, Alla Ray Kuykendall, and daughter, Alla Ray Morris. Morris left the rights to the widow of her cousin, Zora Mae Bryant, who gave control to her children, Jack Baum and Terry Baum Rogers. The Baums eventually sold their rights to the Swedish (now US) company Paradox Entertainment.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard's first published novel, "A Gent from Bear Creek", was printed in Britain one year after his death. This was followed in the United States by a collection of Howard's stories, "Skull-Face and Others" (1946) and then the novel "Conan the Conqueror" (1950). The success of "Conan the Conqueror" led to a series of Conan books from publisher Gnome Press, the later editor of which was L. Sprague de Camp. The series led to the first Conan pastiche, the novel "The Return of Conan" by de Camp and Swedish Howard fan Björn Nyberg. De Camp eventually achieved control over the Conan stories and Conan brand in general. Oscar Friend took over from Kline as literary agent and he was followed by his daughter Kittie West. When she closed the agency in 1965, a new agent was required. De Camp was offered the role but he recommended Glenn Lord instead. Lord began as a fan of Howard and had re-discovered many unpublished pieces that would otherwise have been lost, printing them in books such as "Always Comes Evening" (1957) and his own magazine "The Howard Collector" (1961–1973). He became responsible for the non-Conan works and later restored, textually-pure versions of the Conan stories themselves.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: In 1966, de Camp made a deal with Lancer Books to republish the Conan series, which led to the "First Howard Boom" of the 1970s; their popularity was enhanced by the cover artwork of Frank Frazetta on most of the volumes. Many of his works were reprinted (some printed for the first time) and they expanded into other media such as comic books and films. The Conan stories were increasingly edited by de Camp and the series was extended by pastiches until they replaced the original stories. In response, a puristic movement grew up demanding Howard's original, un-edited stories. The first boom ended in the mid-1980s. In the late 1990s and early 21st century, the "Second Howard Boom" occurred. This saw the printing of new collections of Howard's work, with the restored texts desired by purists. As before, the boom led to new comic books, films and computer games. Howard's house in Cross Plains has been converted into the Robert E. Howard Museum, which has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: The works of Robert E. Howard have been adapted into multiple media, such as the two Conan films released in the 1980s starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In addition to the Conan films, other adaptations have included "Kull the Conqueror" (1997) and "Solomon Kane" (2009). In television, the anthology series "Thriller" (1961) led the adaptations with an episode based on the short story "Pigeons from Hell". The bulk of the adaptations have, however, been based on Conan with two animated and one live action series. Multiple audio dramas have been adapted, from professional audio books and plays to LibriVox recordings of works in the public domain. Computer games have focussed on Conan, beginning with "" (1984) and continuing on to the MMO "" (2008). The first table-top roleplaying game based on Howard's works was TSR's "Conan Unchained!" (1984) for their game "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons". The first comic book adaptation was in the Mexican "Cuentos de Abuelito – La Reina de la Costa Negra" No. 17 (1952). Howard-related comic books continued to be published to the present day.


title: Robert E. Howard

text: Howard is an ongoing inspiration for and influence on heavy metal music. Several bands have adapted Howard's works to tracks or entire albums. The British metal band Bal-Sagoth is named after Howard's story "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth".


title: Alvira Khan Agnihotri

text: Alvira Khan Agnihotri (born 13 December 1969) is an Indian film producer and fashion designer. In 2016, she received a Stardust Award for Best Costume Design for her work on "Sultan". She is the daughter of major dialogue writer and producer Salim Khan and sister of actors Salman Khan, Arbaaz Khan and Sohail Khan.


title: Alvira Khan Agnihotri

text: Her father, Salim Khan, is a Hindi film screenplay writer. Her elder brother is actor Salman Khan and she has designed outfits for him for his movie appearances.


title: Alvira Khan Agnihotri

text: Following their successful collaboration on "Bodyguard", Agnihotri made plans with her brother and husband for a film called "Sultan". She shared a Stardust Award in 2016 for Best Costume Design with Ashley Rebello for their work on "Sultan".


title: Alvira Khan Agnihotri

text: Agnihotri is married to actor-producer Atul Agnihotri. They have two children, daughter Alizeh and son Ayaan.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The colonial history of the United States covers the history of European colonization of North America from the early 17th century until the incorporation of the Thirteen Colonies into the United States after the Revolutionary War. In the late 16th century, England (British Empire), Kingdom of France, Spanish Empire, and the Dutch Republic launched major colonization programs in North America. The death rate was very high among early immigrants, and some early attempts disappeared altogether, such as the English Lost Colony of Roanoke. Nevertheless, successful colonies were established within several decades.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: European settlers came from a variety of social and religious groups, including adventurers, farmers, indentured servants, tradesmen, and a very few from the aristocracy. Settlers included the Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden, the English Quakers of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English Puritans of New England, the Virginian Cavaliers, the English Catholics and Protestant Nonconformists of the Province of Maryland, the "worthy poor" of the Province of Georgia, the Germans who settled the mid-Atlantic colonies, and the Ulster Scots of the Appalachian Mountains. These groups all became part of the United States when it gained its independence in 1776. Russian America and parts of New France and New Spain were also incorporated into the United States at later times. The diverse colonists from these various regions built colonies of distinctive social, religious, political, and economic style.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Over time, non-British colonies East of the Mississippi River were taken over and most of the inhabitants were assimilated. In Nova Scotia, however, the British expelled the French Acadians, and many relocated to Louisiana. No civil wars occurred in the Thirteen Colonies. The two chief armed rebellions were short-lived failures in Virginia in 1676 and in New York in 1689–1691. Some of the colonies developed legalized systems of slavery, centered largely around the Atlantic slave trade. Wars were recurrent between the French and the British during the French and Indian Wars. By 1760, France was defeated and its colonies were seized by Britain.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: On the eastern seaboard, the four distinct English regions were New England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake Bay Colonies (Upper South), and the Southern Colonies (Lower South). Some historians add a fifth region of the "Frontier", which was never separately organized. A significant percentage of the native Americans living in the eastern region had been ravaged by disease before 1620, possibly introduced to them decades before by explorers and sailors (although no conclusive cause has been established).


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Colonists came from European kingdoms that had highly developed military, naval, governmental, and entrepreneurial capabilities. The Spanish and Portuguese centuries-old experience of conquest and colonization during the Reconquista, coupled with new oceanic ship navigation skills, provided the tools, ability, and desire to colonize the New World. These efforts were managed respectively by the Casa de Contratación and the Casa da Índia.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: England, France, and the Netherlands had also started colonies in the West Indies and North America. They had the ability to build ocean-worthy ships but did not have as strong a history of colonization in foreign lands as did Portugal and Spain. However, English entrepreneurs gave their colonies a foundation of merchant-based investment that seemed to need much less government support.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Initially, matters concerning the colonies were dealt with primarily by the Privy Council of England and its committees. The Commission of Trade was set up in 1625 as the first special body convened to advise on colonial (plantation) questions. From 1696 until the end of the American Revolution, colonial affairs were the responsibility of the Board of Trade in partnership with the relevant secretaries of state, which changed from the Secretary of State for the Southern Department to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1768.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Mercantilism was the basic policy imposed by Britain on its colonies from the 1660s, which meant that the government became a partner with merchants based in England to increase political power and private wealth. This was done to the exclusion of other empires and even other merchants in its own colonies. The government protected its London-based merchants and kept out others by trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies to domestic industries to maximize exports from the realm and minimize imports.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The government also fought smuggling, and this became a direct source of controversy with North American merchants when their normal business activities became reclassified as "smuggling" by the Navigation Acts. This included activities that had been ordinary business dealings previously, such as direct trade with the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese. The goal of mercantilism was to run trade surpluses so that gold and silver would pour into London. The government took its share through duties and taxes, with the remainder going to merchants in Britain. The government spent much of its revenue on the Royal Navy, which protected the British colonies and also threatened the colonies of the other empires, sometimes even seizing them. Thus, the British Navy captured New Amsterdam (New York) in 1664. The colonies were captive markets for British industry, and the goal was to enrich the mother country.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The prospect of religious persecution by authorities of the crown and the Church of England prompted a significant number of colonization efforts. The Pilgrims were separatist Puritans who fled persecution in England, first to the Netherlands and ultimately to Plymouth Plantation in 1620. Over the following 20 years, people fleeing persecution from King Charles I settled most of New England. Similarly, the Province of Maryland was founded in part to be a haven for Roman Catholics.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Several European countries attempted to found colonies in the Americas after 1500. Most of those attempts ended in failure. The colonists themselves faced high rates of death from disease, starvation, inefficient resupply, conflict with Native Americans, attacks by rival European powers, and other causes.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Spain had numerous failed attempts, including San Miguel de Gualdape in South Carolina (1526), Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition to Florida's Gulf coast (1528–36), Pensacola in West Florida (1559–61), Fort San Juan in North Carolina (1567–68), and the Ajacán Mission in Virginia (1570–71). The French failed at Parris Island, South Carolina (1562–63), Fort Caroline on Florida's Atlantic coast (1564–65), Saint Croix Island, Maine (1604–05), and Fort Saint Louis, Texas (1685–89). The most notable English failures were the "Lost Colony of Roanoke" (1583–90) in North Carolina and Popham Colony in Maine (1607–08). It was at the Roanoke Colony that Virginia Dare became the first English child born in America; her fate is unknown.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Starting in the 16th century, Spain built a colonial empire in the Americas consisting of New Spain and other vice-royalties. New Spain included territories in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, much of the United States west of the Mississippi River, parts of Latin America (including Puerto Rico), and the Spanish East Indies (including Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands). New Spain encompassed the territory of Louisiana after the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762), though Louisiana reverted to France in the 1800 Third Treaty of San Ildefonso.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Many territories that had been part of New Spain became part of the United States after 1776 through various wars and treaties, including the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Adams–Onís Treaty (1819), the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), and the Spanish–American War (1898). There were also several Spanish expeditions to the Pacific Northwest, but Spain gave the United States all claims to the Pacific Northwest in the Adams–Onís Treaty. There were several thousand families in New Mexico and California who became American citizens in 1848, plus small numbers in the other colonies.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Spain established several small outposts in Florida in the early 16th century. The most important of these was St. Augustine, founded in 1565 but repeatedly attacked and burned by pirates, privateers, and English forces, and nearly all the Spanish left after the Treaty of Paris (1763) ceded Florida to Great Britain. Certain First Spanish Period structures remain today, especially those made of coquina, a limestone quarried nearby.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The British attacked Spanish Florida during numerous wars. As early as 1687, the Spanish government had begun to offer asylum to slaves from British colonies, and the Spanish Crown officially proclaimed in 1693 that runaway slaves would find freedom in Florida in return for converting to Catholicism and four years of military service to the Spanish Crown. In effect, Spaniards created a maroon settlement in Florida as a front-line defense against English attacks from the north. This settlement was centered at Fort Mose. Spain also intended to destabilize the plantation economy of the British colonies by creating a free black community to attract slaves. Notable British raids on St. Augustine were James Moore's 1702 raid and James Oglethorpe's 1740 siege.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: In 1763, Spain traded Florida to Great Britain in exchange for control of Havana, Cuba, which the British had captured during the Seven Years' War. Florida was home to about 3,000 Spaniards at the time, and nearly all quickly left. Britain occupied Florida but did not send many settlers to the area. Dr. Andrew Turnbull's failed colony at New Smyrna, however, resulted in hundreds of Menorcans, Greeks, and Italians settling in St. Augustine in 1777. During the American Revolution, East and West Florida were Loyalist colonies. Spain regained control of Florida in 1783 by the Peace of Paris which ended the Revolutionary War. Spain sent no more settlers or missionaries to Florida during the Second Spanish Period. The inhabitants of West Florida revolted against the Spanish in 1810 and formed the Republic of West Florida, which was quickly annexed by the United States. The United States took possession of East Florida in 1821 according to the terms of the Adams–Onís Treaty.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Throughout the 16th century, Spain explored the southwest from Mexico. The first expedition was the Niza expedition in 1538. Francisco Coronado followed with a larger expedition in 1539, throughout modern New Mexico and Arizona, arriving in New Mexico in 1540. The Spanish moved north from Mexico, settling villages in the upper valley of the Rio Grande, including much of the western half of the present-day state of New Mexico. The capital of Santa Fe was settled in 1610 and remains one of the oldest continually inhabited settlements in the United States. Local Indians expelled the Spanish for 12 years following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680; they returned in 1692 in the bloodless reoccupation of Santa Fe. Control was by Spain (223 years) and Mexico (25 years) until 1846, when the American Army of the West took over in the Mexican–American War. About a third of the population in the 21st century is descended from the Spanish settlers.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Spanish explorers sailed along the coast of present-day California starting with Cabrillo in 1542-43. From 1565 to 1815, Spanish galleons regularly arrived from Manila at Cape Mendocino, about 300 miles (480 km) north of San Francisco or farther south. Then they sailed south along the California coast to Acapulco, Mexico. Often they did not land, because of the rugged, foggy coast. Spain wanted a safe harbor for galleons. They did not find San Francisco Bay, perhaps because of fog hiding the entrance. In 1585 Gali charted the coast just south of San Francisco Bay,


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: In 1594 Soromenho explored and was shipwrecked in Drake's Bay just north of San Francisco Bay, then went south in a small boat past Half Moon Bay and Monterey Bay. They traded with Native Americans for food.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: In 1602 Vizcaino charted the coast from Lower California to Mendocino and some inland areas and recommended Monterey for settlement. The King agreed, but the settlement project was diverted to areas off Japan.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: No settlements were established until 1769. From 1769 until the independence of Mexico in 1820, Spain sent missionaries and soldiers to Alta California who created a series of missions operated by Franciscan priests. They also operated "presidios" (forts), "pueblos" (settlements), and ranchos (land grant ranches), along the southern and central coast of California. Father Junípero Serra, founded the first missions in Spanish upper "Las Californias", starting with Mission San Diego de Alcalá in 1769. Through the Spanish and Mexican eras they eventually comprised a series of 21 missions to spread Roman Catholicism among the local Native Americans, linked by "El Camino Real" ("The Royal Road"). They were established to convert the indigenous peoples of California, while protecting historic Spanish claims to the area. The missions introduced European technology, livestock, and crops. The Indian Reductions converted the native peoples into groups of Mission Indians; they worked as laborers in the missions and the ranchos. In the 1830s the missions were disbanded and the lands sold to Californios. The indigenous Native American population was around 150,000; the "Californios" (Mexican era Californians) around 10,000; including immigrant Americans and other nationalities involved in trade and business in California.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: In September 1493, Christopher Columbus set sail on his second voyage with 17 ships from Cádiz. On November 19, 1493 he landed on the island of Puerto Rico, naming it "San Juan Bautista" in honor of Saint John the Baptist. The first European colony, Caparra, was founded on August 8, 1508, by Juan Ponce de León, a lieutenant under Columbus, who was greeted by the Taíno Cacique Agüeybaná and who later became the first governor of the island. Ponce de Leon was actively involved in the Higuey massacre of 1503 in Puerto Rico. In 1508, Sir Ponce de Leon was chosen by the Spanish Crown to lead the conquest and slavery of the Taíno Indians for gold mining operations. The following year, the colony was abandoned in favor of a nearby island on the coast, named Puerto Rico (Rich Port), which had a suitable harbor. In 1511, a second settlement, San Germán was established in the southwestern part of the island. During the 1520s, the island took the name of Puerto Rico while the port became San Juan.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: As part of the colonization process, African slaves were brought to the island in 1513. Following the decline of the Taíno population, more slaves were brought to Puerto Rico; however, the number of slaves on the island paled in comparison to those in neighboring islands. Also, early in the colonization of Puerto Rico, attempts were made to wrest control of Puerto Rico from Spain. The Caribs, a raiding tribe of the Caribbean, attacked Spanish settlements along the banks of the Daguao and Macao rivers in 1514 and again in 1521 but each time they were easily repelled by the superior Spanish firepower. However, these would not be the last attempts at control of Puerto Rico. The European powers quickly realized the potential of the lands not yet colonized by Europeans and attempted to gain control of them. Nonetheless, Puerto Rico remained a Spanish possession until the 19th century.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The last half of the 19th century was marked by the Puerto Rican struggle for sovereignty. A census conducted in 1860 revealed a population of 583,308. Of these, 300,406 (51.5%) were white and 282,775 (48.5%) were persons of color, the latter including people of primarily African heritage, mulattos and mestizos. The majority of the population in Puerto Rico was illiterate (83.7%) and lived in poverty, and the agricultural industry—at the time, the main source of income—was hampered by lack of road infrastructure, adequate tools and equipment, and natural disasters, including hurricanes and droughts. The economy also suffered from increasing tariffs and taxes imposed by the Spanish Crown. Furthermore, Spain had begun to exile or jail any person who called for liberal reforms. The Spanish–American War broke out in 1898, in the aftermath of the explosion of USS "Maine" in Havana Harbor. The U.S. defeated Spain by the end of the year, and won control of Puerto Rico in the ensuing peace treaty. In the Foraker Act of 1900, the U.S. Congress established Puerto Rico's status as an unincorporated territory.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: New France was the vast area centered on the Saint Lawrence River, Great Lakes, Mississippi River and other major tributary rivers that was explored and claimed by France starting in the early 17th century. It was composed of several colonies: Acadia, Canada, Newfoundland, Louisiana, Île-Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island), and Île Saint Jean (present-day Prince Edward Island). These colonies came under British or Spanish control after the French and Indian War, though France briefly re-acquired a portion of Louisiana in 1800. The United States would gain much of New France in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, and the U.S. would acquire another portion of French territory with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The remainder of New France became part of Canada, with the exception of the French island of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: By 1660, French fur trappers, missionaries and military detachments based in Montreal pushed west along the Great Lakes upriver into the Pays d'en Haut and founded outposts at Green Bay, Fort de Buade and Saint Ignace (both at Michilimackinac), Sault Sainte Marie, Vincennes, and Detroit in 1701. During the French and Indian War (1754–1763) many of these settlements became occupied by the British. By 1773, the population of Detroit was 1,400. At the end of the War for Independence in 1783, the region south of the Great Lakes formally became part of the United States.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The Illinois Country by 1752 had a French population of 2,500; it was located to the west of the "Ohio Country" and was concentrated around Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Sainte Genevieve.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: French claims to French Louisiana stretched thousands of miles from modern Louisiana north to the largely unexplored Midwest, and west to the Rocky Mountains. It was generally divided into Upper and Lower Louisiana. This vast tract was first settled at Mobile and Biloxi around 1700, and continued to grow when 7,000 French immigrants founded New Orleans in 1718. Settlement proceeded very slowly; New Orleans became an important port as the gateway to the Mississippi River, but there was little other economic development because the city lacked a prosperous hinterland.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: In 1763, Louisiana was ceded to Spain around New Orleans and west of the Mississippi River. In the 1780s, the western border of the newly independent United States stretched to the Mississippi River. The United States reached an agreement with Spain for navigation rights on the river and was content to let the "feeble" colonial power stay in control of the area. The situation changed when Napoleon forced Spain to return Louisiana to France in 1802 and threatened to close the river to American vessels. Alarmed, the United States offered to buy New Orleans.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Napoleon needed funds to wage another war with Great Britain, and he doubted that France could defend such a huge and distant territory. He therefore offered to sell all of Louisiana for $15 million. The United States completed the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, doubling the size of the nation.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: "Nieuw-Nederland", or New Netherland, was a colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands chartered in 1614, in what became New York, New Jersey, and parts of other neighboring states. The peak population was less than 10,000. The Dutch established a patroon system with feudal-like rights given to a few powerful landholders; they also established religious tolerance and free trade. The colony's capital of New Amsterdam was founded in 1625 and located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan, which grew to become a major world city.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The city was captured by the English in 1664; they took complete control of the colony in 1674 and renamed it New York. However the Dutch landholdings remained, and the Hudson River Valley maintained a traditional Dutch character until the 1820s.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Traces of Dutch influence remain in present-day northern New Jersey and southeastern New York State, such as homes, family surnames, and the names of roads and whole towns.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: New Sweden () was a Swedish colony that existed along the Delaware River Valley from 1638 to 1655 and encompassed land in present-day Delaware, southern New Jersey, and southeastern Pennsylvania. The several hundred settlers were centered around the capital of Fort Christina, at the location of what is today the city of Wilmington, Delaware. The colony also had settlements near the present-day location of Salem, New Jersey (Fort Nya Elfsborg) and on Tinicum Island, Pennsylvania. The colony was captured by the Dutch in 1655 and merged into New Netherland, with most of the colonists remaining. Years later, the entire New Netherland colony was incorporated into England's colonial holdings.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The colony of New Sweden introduced Lutheranism to America in the form of some of the continent's oldest European churches. The colonists also introduced the log cabin to America, and numerous rivers, towns, and families in the lower Delaware River Valley region derive their names from the Swedes. The Nothnagle Log House in present-day Gibbstown, New Jersey, was constructed in the late 1630s during the time of the New Sweden colony. It remains the oldest European-built house in New Jersey and is believed to be one of the oldest surviving log houses in the United States.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Russia explored the area that became Alaska, starting with the Second Kamchatka expedition in the 1730s and early 1740s. Their first settlement was founded in 1784 by Grigory Shelikhov. The Russian-American Company was formed in 1799 with the influence of Nikolay Rezanov, for the purpose of buying sea otters for their fur from native hunters. In 1867, the U.S. purchased Alaska, and nearly all Russians abandoned the area except a few missionaries of the Russian Orthodox Church working among the natives.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: England made its first successful efforts at the start of the 17th century for several reasons. During this era, English proto-nationalism and national assertiveness blossomed under the threat of Spanish invasion, assisted by a degree of Protestant militarism and the energy of Queen Elizabeth. At this time, however, there was no official attempt by the English government to create a colonial empire. Rather the motivation behind the founding of colonies was piecemeal and variable. Practical considerations played their parts, such as commercial enterprise, over-crowding, and the desire for freedom of religion. The main waves of settlement came in the 17th century. After 1700, most immigrants to Colonial America arrived as indentured servants, young unmarried men and women seeking a new life in a much richer environment. The consensus view among economic historians and economists is that the indentured servitude occurred largely as "an institutional response to a capital market imperfection," but that it "enabled prospective migrants to borrow against their future earnings in order to pay the high cost of passage to America." Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, the British shipped an estimated 50,000 to 120,000 convicts to its American colonies.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Alexander Hamilton (1712–1756) was a Scottish-born doctor and writer who lived and worked in Annapolis, Maryland. Leo Lemay says that his 1744 travel diary "Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton" is "the best single portrait of men and manners, of rural and urban life, of the wide range of society and scenery in colonial America." His diary has been widely used by scholars, and covers his travels from Maryland to Maine. Biographer Elaine Breslaw says that he encountered:


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The first successful English colony was Jamestown, established May 14, 1607, near Chesapeake Bay. The business venture was financed and coordinated by the London Virginia Company, a joint-stock company looking for gold. Its first years were extremely difficult, with very high death rates from disease and starvation, wars with local Indians, and little gold. The colony survived and flourished by turning to tobacco as a cash crop. By the late 17th century, Virginia's export economy was largely based on tobacco, and new, richer settlers came in to take up large portions of land, build large plantations and import indentured servants and slaves. In 1676, Bacon's Rebellion occurred, but was suppressed by royal officials. After Bacon's Rebellion, African slaves rapidly replaced indentured servants as Virginia's main labor force.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The colonial assembly shared power with a royally appointed governor. On a more local level, governmental power was invested in county courts, which were self-perpetuating (the incumbents filled any vacancies and there never were popular elections). As cash crop producers, Chesapeake plantations were heavily dependent on trade with England. With easy navigation by river, there were few towns and no cities; planters shipped directly to Britain. High death rates and a very young population profile characterized the colony during its first years.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Randall Miller points out that "America had no titled aristocracy... although one aristocrat, Lord Thomas Fairfax, did take up residence in Virginia in 1734." Lord Fairfax (1693–1781) was a Scottish baron who came to America permanently to oversee his family's vast land holdings. Historian Arthur Schlesinger says that he "was unique among the permanent comers in bearing so high a rank as baron." He was a patron of George Washington and was not disturbed during the war.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The Pilgrims were a small group of Puritan separatists who felt that they needed to physically distance themselves from the Church of England. They initially moved to the Netherlands, then decided to re-establish themselves in America. The initial Pilgrim settlers sailed to North America in 1620 on the "Mayflower". Upon their arrival, they drew up the Mayflower Compact, by which they bound themselves together as a united community, thus establishing the small Plymouth Colony. William Bradford was their main leader. After its founding, other settlers traveled from England to join the colony.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The non-separatist Puritans constituted a much larger group than the Pilgrims, and they established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629 with 400 settlers. They sought to reform the Church of England by creating a new, pure church in the New World. By 1640, 20,000 had arrived; many died soon after arrival, but the others found a healthy climate and an ample food supply. The Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies together spawned other Puritan colonies in New England, including the New Haven, Saybrook, and Connecticut colonies. During the 17th century, the New Haven and Saybrook colonies were absorbed by Connecticut.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The Puritans created a deeply religious, socially tight-knit, and politically innovative culture that still influences the modern United States. They hoped that this new land would serve as a "redeemer nation". They fled England and attempted to create a "nation of saints" or a "City upon a Hill" in America: an intensely religious, thoroughly righteous community designed to be an example for all of Europe.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Economically, Puritan New England fulfilled the expectations of its founders. The Puritan economy was based on the efforts of self-supporting farmsteads that traded only for goods which they could not produce themselves, unlike the cash crop-oriented plantations of the Chesapeake region. There was a generally higher economic standing and standard of living in New England than in the Chesapeake. New England became an important mercantile and shipbuilding center, along with agriculture, fishing, and logging, serving as the hub for trading between the southern colonies and Europe.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Providence Plantation was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams on land provided by Narragansett sachem Canonicus. Williams was a Puritan who preached religious tolerance, separation of Church and State, and a complete break with the Church of England. He was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony over theological disagreements, and he and other settlers founded Providence Plantation based on an egalitarian constitution providing for majority rule "in civil things" and "liberty of conscience" in religious matters. In 1637, a second group including Anne Hutchinson established a second settlement on Aquidneck Island, also known as Rhode Island.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Other colonists settled to the north, mingling with adventurers and profit-oriented settlers to establish more religiously diverse colonies in New Hampshire and Maine. These small settlements were absorbed by Massachusetts when it made significant land claims in the 1640s and 1650s, but New Hampshire was eventually given a separate charter in 1679. Maine remained a part of Massachusetts until achieving statehood in 1820.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Under King James II of England, the New England colonies, New York, and the Jerseys were briefly united as the Dominion of New England (1686–1689). The administration was eventually led by Governor Sir Edmund Andros and seized colonial charters, revoked land titles, and ruled without local assemblies, causing anger among the population. The 1689 Boston revolt was inspired by England's Glorious Revolution against James II and led to the arrest of Andros, Boston Anglicans, and senior dominion officials by the Massachusetts militia. Andros was jailed for several months, then returned to England. The Dominion of New England was dissolved and governments resumed under their earlier charters.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: However, the Massachusetts charter had been revoked in 1684, and a new one was issued in 1691 that combined Massachusetts and Plymouth into the Province of Massachusetts Bay. King William III sought to unite the New England colonies militarily by appointing the Earl of Bellomont to three simultaneous governorships and military command over Connecticut and Rhode Island. However, these attempts at unified control failed.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The Middle Colonies consisted of the present-day states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware and were characterized by a large degree of diversity—religious, political, economic, and ethnic.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: The Dutch colony of New Netherland was taken over by the English and renamed New York. However, large numbers of Dutch remained in the colony, dominating the rural areas between New York City and Albany. Meanwhile, Yankees from New England started moving in, as did immigrants from Germany. New York City attracted a large polyglot population, including a large black slave population.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: New Jersey began as a division of New York, and was divided into the proprietary colonies of East and West Jersey for a time.


title: Colonial history of the United States

text: Pennsylvania was founded in 1681 as a proprietary colony of Quaker William Penn. The main population elements included the Quaker population based in Philadelphia, a Scotch Irish population on the Western frontier, and numerous German colonies in between. Philadelphia became the largest city in the colonies with its central location, excellent port, and a population of about 30,000.