The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

Author page

Robert E. Howard

2 universes Last reviewed 2026-09-27

Robert E. Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American pulp fiction writer, born in Peaster, Texas, and largely self-educated in his craft, though he briefly attended high school in Brownwood and took stenography and bookkeeping courses at Howard Payne College. He aspired to be a writer from age nine and made his first professional sale, a caveman story, in late 1924 for sixteen dollars; by age twenty-three he was supporting himself entirely through writing, publishing prolifically in pulp magazines, most notably Weird Tales. Howard is best remembered for creating Conan the Barbarian, who appeared in seventeen stories published between 1932 and 1936 along with the novel The Hour of the Dragon, the only full-length Conan work. He also created the Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane, the Pictish king Bran Mak Morn, the boxing sailor Sailor Steve Costigan, and the comic western hero Breckinridge Elkins. He is widely regarded as the father of the sword-and-sorcery subgenre, and his vivid, propulsive prose style and morally ambiguous heroes influenced generations of fantasy writers who followed. Howard's career, and his earnings, peaked in 1936, the same year he died by suicide in Cross Plains, Texas, at age thirty, shortly before his mother's death; at the time, Weird Tales still owed him substantial unpaid earnings.

Universe(s)

Conan / Kull / Bran Mak Morn

  • Core Canon books: 27
  • Current rank: #559 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 3.91
  • Award recognitions: None recorded

Solomon Kane

  • Core Canon books: 7
  • Current rank: #656 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 3.78
  • Award recognitions: None recorded

Books

Aggregate across all universes

These are separate, unrelated universes; the totals below are plain sums of already-published per-universe facts, never a blended or averaged score across them. See each universe's own figures above.

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