The Glenn Lord Collection of Robert E. Howard includes numerous drafts of Howard’s short fiction and poetry. The majority of the drafts are fair-copy typescripts or carbons, although handwritten drafts are also present, as are photocopies and “retypes” created by Lord. Although generally in good condition, the drafts are often on acidic and brittle paper and some are heavily yellowed. Also present in the collection is correspondence between Howard, publishers, friends, family, and other authors, third-party correspondence dating into the 1960s, and some of Howard’s school work and personal records.

To save paper, Howard often left small margins on the sides and bottom of pages, and he would write new drafts on the back of older material. Howard did not always title his stories, and he frequently did not number pages. If a work did not sell in one genre, Howard sometimes reworked his material, even just part of a story, to fit a different genre. Both he and his editors often changed the titles of stories when submitting works to different publications. Early in his career, Howard would send his original drafts to publishers. These drafts were not often returned, so he began to use carbons to make copies of the drafts.

Howard made little effort to organize his papers. After his untimely death, his father (Dr. I. M. Howard) and an assistant spent several days attempting to sort the papers in order to send them to an agent, Otis Adelbert Kline. Kline only kept a small number of the transcripts, returning the majority which were stored in a large trunk. Following the death of I. M. Howard, the trunk passed to E. Hoffman Price in California. Price shared the stories with friends, and the material was not always returned.

Beginning in 1965, Glenn Lord became the agent for the Howard heirs and began gathering back the drafts and organizing and identifying the materials. During this process, if one of the stories was untitled, Lord would often create one. He also made notes when he found stories typed on the reverse of other stories. Lord (or someone else) also replaced damaged pages in the middle of stories. They are typed in a similar way to Howard’s pages, and on similar paper, but the straightness of the lines and the lack of damaged keys indicates these replacements (referred to as clone pages on a spreadsheet created by Paul Herman: see below). Almost all of the poetry was retyped by Lord, and he retyped a few of the stories. Some of the transcripts were later destroyed in flooding and only exist as photocopies in the possession of Patrice Louinet, the Harvard scholar and French editor of Howard’s books whom Lord had provided with copies before the original’s destruction.

A spreadsheet created by Paul Herman of the Robert E. Howard Foundation, and editor of a Howard bibliography, contains detailed information about the titles of the works and types of materials in the collection. All of the materials were given five digit “Bates” numbers that are listed on the folders in the collection and are organized in ascending order. The spreadsheet includes some documents not in the possession of the Ransom Center, such as those held by Louinet. At some point, much of the material was scanned and in some cases only these scans are in the Ransom Center holdings. If there are originals along with the scans, the original will typically have a lower Bates number.

The physical organization of the collection by Bates numbers was retained by the Ransom Center, however, the finding aid is organized intellectually into three series: I. Works, 1920-1936, undated; II. Correspondence, 1924-1965; and III. Personal and Career Papers, 1920-1922, undated.

Series I. Works consists mostly of typescripts of short fiction and poetry, as well as drawings of maps and cartoons. All drafts are complete unless otherwise noted. The series is divided into three subseries: A. Short Fiction, 1920-1936, B. Untitled Short Fiction, undated; and C. Poetry, undated.

Series II. Correspondence is divided into three subseries: A. Outgoing, 1925-1965; B. Incoming, 1925-1936; and C. Third Party Correspondence, 1925-1945. Howard’s correspondents include several of his contemporaries: H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, and E. Hoffman Price, among others. Third party correspondence between Dr. I. M. Howard, Ed Price, and others is included, some of which is filed in the outgoing and the incoming subseries. Letter dates, when not provided, were taken from .

Series III. Personal and Career Papers includes a relatively small volume of notes, drawings, inventories, and reports. Of note are several folders of Howard’s schoolwork from the early 1920s and three works by other authors.

Series IV. Electronic Files contains electronic scans of the collection, as well as spreadsheet guide and bibliography.