Sentiment: An Olio of Rarer Works

by Robert E. Howard

The REH Foundation Press is proud to present Sentiment: An Olio of Rarer Works. This volume is the Howard collector’s dream, containing those hard-to-find stories from various small press publications from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. No longer will readers have to seek out copies of Pay Day, Lurid Confessions #1, or The Dark Man #2; all of the Howard content in those volumes, and many more, is included here.

Also included are many items seldom seen by collectors. “The Rivals” makes its first appearance outside of a Foundation Newsletter; all three issues of Howard’s amateur press publication, The Right Hook, are presented in their entirety; and many other hard-to-find pieces have finally found a home in Sentiment. For most of these items, this is their first publication in book form. Many of the pieces in this collection are juvenilia.

This massive volume, close to 600 pages, is printed in hardback with dust jacket, in a limited quantity of 150 copies, each individually numbered. Cover design by Jim Keegan; edited by Rob Roehm.

Contents

Introduction by Mark Finn

Adventure Tales

Wild Water
Tallyho!
Shackled Mitts
Wolves—And a Sword
Untitled (“. . . that is, the artistry . . .”)
Untitled (“Franey was a fool.”)
The Fear-Master
The Drifter
The Land of Forgotten Ages
Untitled (“Trail led through dense jungle.”)
Untitled (“The lazy quiet of the mid-summer day. . .”)
Eighttoes Makes a Play
Alternate ending
Untitled (“Who I am it matters little.”)

The Adventures of Steve Bender

Bill Smalley and the Power of the Human Eye
Over the Rockies in a Ford
The Ghost of Bald Rock Ranch
A Boy, a Beehive, and a Chinaman
Westward, Ho!
Friends
Untitled (William Aloysius McGraw’s father. . .”)
The Wild Man
A Fishing Trip
The Ghost with the Silk Hat
The Hand of Obeah
Untitled (Maybe it don’t seem like anything . . .”)

Detective Parodies

Unhand Me, Villain!
Aha! Or the Mystery of the Queen’s Necklace
Halt! Who Goes There?
The Sappious Few Menchew
The Fastidious Fooey Mancucu
The Case of the College Toilet
Untitled (“Hatrack!”)
The Werewolf Murder Case
The Tom Thumb Moider Mystery
The Toy Rattle Murder Case

Humor

Cupid Vs. Pollux
Thoroughbreds
The Heathen
The Ghosts of Jacksonville
Mr. Dowser Buys a Car
The Influence of the Movies
The Sheik
The Ideal Girl
A Unique Hat
Untitled (“A man,” said my friend . . .”)
A Man and a Brother
West Is West
The Weaker Sex
What the Deuce?
The Mutiny of the Hellroarer
The Roving Boys on a Sandburg
Wolfsdung
The Bore of the Cowed
The Dook of Stork
The Rump of Swift
King Bahthur’s Court
King Hootus
Untitled (“Tumba Hooey. . .”)
Where Strange Gods Squall
A Glass of Vodka
The Post of the Sappy Skipper
After the Game
Sleeping Beauty
Untitled (“. . . the honor of Beffum”)
Weekly Short Story
The Thessalians
Ye College Days
The Reformation: A Dream

Confessionals & Other Contemporary Fiction

A Matter of Age
The Curse of Greed
The Stones of Destiny
The Grove of Lovers
Revenge
The Rivals
Midnight
A South Sea Storm
The Sophisticate
The Voice of the Mob
A Horror in the Night
Pigskin Scholar
Diogenes of Today
The Devil in His Brain
The Loser
The Female of the Species
The Splendid Brute
The Nut’s Shell
Pay Day
A Touch of Color
The Block
Nerve
Ten Minutes on a Street Corner
Untitled (“Yessuh”)

Commentary on the World

The Beast From the Abyss
With a Set of Rattlesnake Rattles
The Ghost of Camp Colorado
The Hashish Land
In His Own Image
The Sword
Jazz Music
Musings
The Question of the East
What the Nation Owes to the South
More Evidences of the Innate Divinity of Man
Sentiment
Surrender—Your Money or Your Vice
Them
Something About Eve
The Vicar of Wakefield
Circus Charade
Man
Legend

The Right Hook

Volume 1, Number 1
Editorial; Twentieth Century Slave Trade; The Great Munney Ring; Bookmen and Books; Sisters; Sporting Page; Puritans; Vengeance of a Woman; Sordid Sayings of a Simple Sap; L’Envoi (“Live like a wolf then”)

Volume 1, Number 2
Untitled Poem (“Ho, merry bark”); Untitled Wrestling Article (“Munn!”); Le Gentil Homme le Diable; John L. Sullivan (verse); Untitled Boxing Article (“On May 29”); Famous Sayings, by Truett Vinson; Note about Tevis Clyde Smith; Untitled Poem (“And Bill, he looked at me”); What Is Love? (verse); Jack Dempsey (verse); A Pirut Story [sic.]; Rope (verse), by Herbert C. Klatt; L’Envoi (“Harlots and choir girls”)

Volume 1, Number 3
Untitled Poem (“This is a young world”); Untitled (“My name is San Culotte”); My Sentiments, Set to Jazz (verse);
Untitled Article (“I progress slowly in my classification of champions.”); Ringside Tales (two untitled stories: “Marks
was a giant,” and “Science will always beat brute strength.”); Untitled Article (“I like John L. Sullivan.”); Editorial;
L’Envoi (“Twilight striding o’er the mountain”)

583 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2009

About the author

Robert Ervin Howard was an American pulp writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, boxing, western, and detective fiction. Howard wrote "over three-hundred stories and seven-hundred poems of raw power and unbridled emotion" and is especially noted for his memorable depictions of "a sombre universe of swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror."

He is well known for having created—in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales—the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can only be compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.

—Wikipedia

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not some of Howard's best or most well know work this is a great compellation of all his very early work before he became a professional writer. Fun read. Very recommended

[Vincent Darlage · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting look at rare and early works by REH, showcasing works that didn't entirely work, unfinished concepts, and so on. Certainly not his best works, although there were a few gems within. This is definitely for the REH completist.