Project Pride is a community organization in Cross Plains, Texas, which bought and restored the Robert E. Howard home with financial support from REH fans around the world (and from the late Alla Ray Morris, who had inherited the rights to REH’s works). They now operate the Home as a museum in REH’s memory, and they love the opportunity to show it off for visitors. Bob’s room is particularly well done. It is not open on a regular basis, so it is best to make arrangements in advance by writing to the people at Project Pride.
While much has been done in the ten years since Project Pride first bought the house, a lot remains, and Cross Plains is not a wealthy community. Any support from REH fans — either through joining Project Pride, or through donations earmarked for the Howard Home — helps with the ongoing efforts to preserve Howard’s memory in his hometown.
The community of Cross Plains, Project Pride, the Cross Plains Library, and the Howard House Museum set aside one weekend per year on which to celebrate their renowned author, Robert E. Howard. This festival, called Robert E. Howard Days, is usually celebrated on the weekend in June that comes closest to the date (June 11, 1936) that Howard passed away. The weekend features a variety of events, including tours of the Howard home, displays of original Howard manuscripts, guided tours of Cross Plains that show many places Howard frequented or mentioned in his Letters, trips to Howard’s grave site in nearby Brownwood, a banquet complete with keynote speakers, and much more. Hundreds of Howard fans from around the world travel to Cross Plains to participate in this annual event.
For more information or to arrange for a visit, write to:
Project Pride
P.O. Box 534
Cross Plains, TX 76443
Visit the Project Pride web page.
(254)725-6562
(254)725-6498
(254)725-4993 or
(254)725-7478
Glenn Lord was the long time agent for the heirs to the REH rights, from the 1960s into the late 1990s. He was also unquestionably the greatest and most persistent and tenacious researcher of REH ever. Among his efforts was the acquisition of the bulk of the typescripts (i.e., the original typed pages) of REH. By the time of his passing in 2011, Glenn had amassed around 20K pages of original REH typescript. Pursuant to his wishes, these were donated to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. But before they arrived at HRC, Paul Herman, a board member of the Foundation and long-time friend of Glenn, was allowed to create scans of all the pages. Challengingly, due to flooding that occurred in Houston in years past, a few thousand pages of typescript had become jumbled, and had to be identified and re-sorted. This identification and indexing work also fell to Paul, and after many hours of work spread over the course of years, virtually all the typescript pages have been identified and indexed. For researchers looking to find out about any original REH work, including early drafts, etc., the Foundation can provide information.
The REH Foundation Press was created in 2007 to help insure that all of REH’s works would be available to readers in their original form as they were written, with an absolute minimum of editing. Those familiar with the history of REH publishing know that various editors over the years have taken liberties to edit as they please, changing stories and poetry in all kinds of ways. The Wandering Star series of books that began in 1998 with The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, followed by more books from Subterranean Press and Del Rey, returned REH’s most famous characters and stories to their original form, with editing by various REHF Board members. The REH Foundation Press series continues this work, extending it to ALL of the works of REH. Each book in the 22 volume REHFP series has been edited by REHF board members, and includes many works first appearance in print. REHFP also publishes collections of works related to REH’s friends, family and life, for those that want to know more about REH the person. For more information about the REHFP series, click here.
HowardWorks is the ultimate online bibliography for REH. The website attempts to cover every publication of REH work, including some incredibly rare and scarce items. Each work gets its own page, with detailed listings. Likewise each publication gets its own page, usually complete with photos of the covers. Foreign publications, some bootleg items, the attempt is to literally capture every publication. The link to HowardWorks is here.
