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Boxing Stories (The Works of Robert E. Howard)

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I got this book as an ongoing effort to collect as much of the works of Robert E. Howard as I can. But when I opened it and started reading, I was hooked! These stories are excellent. Short and quick to read, they are full of action, drama, humor, and really place the reader in the world they are set in. If you are a fan of the era, like boxing, or just wasnt a rousing read, I highly reccomend this book.

Robert E Howard is a legend along with H P Lovecraft for writing hundreds of short stories for cheep pulps and getting hardly any money or recognition for their talent. While Robert E Howard is best known for his Conan stories, fans who look beond are rewarded. Such is the case with this collection of Boxing Stories. The stories are fantastic and completely over the top, and there is a vocabulary Robert E Howard uses skillfuly that will have you cracking up. The fight scenes play out like violent and gory Looney Tunes, and the diologue makes the charecters jump out of the page. Once you read a few of these short storys you'll begin to realise that this is a type of writing to be savored. Robert E Howard literally wrote the book on this type of fiction.

you're missing out! Robert E. Howard was a proflic author of exciting stories, including westerns, swords and sorcery, adventure, and horror. Boxing Stories collects a sample of REH's sports stories, filled with bruising battlers who fight for a variety--but usually noble--reasons. Of note, the collection contains a story that REH regarded as one of his finest 'The Iron Men,' here presented as Howard originally intended.

Boxing stories is a good sampler of R.E.H.'s sport fiction. Ten of the stories are from his humorous Sailor Steve Costigan series. The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux is an interesting combination of ghost and boxing story featuring an african american boxer, (fair warning, it contains non p.c.elements).Iron Men ,which Howard considered one of his best stories, is included in its original form, restored from the heavily edited version first published in Fight Stories Magazine in 1930. While Howard thought it one of his best,I think Fists of the Desert and They Always Come Back are actually better. They are gritty and realistic, telling of the shabby, brutal lives of low level boxers of that era.If you enjoy R.E.H.,sports stories,or just the style of 20's and 30's pulp fiction I think you will like Boxing Stories (the Works of Robert E. Howard).

Author Robert E. Howard has long been known has long been known as the father of the Sword and Sorcery fantasy genre and the creator of the iconic Conan the Barbarian character, but what many readers don't realize is Howard wrote plenty of stories not set in fantastical worlds and stories that were filled with bigger-than-life but quite human characters.

"Boxing Stories," edited by Chris Gruber, is a collection of Howard's short stories and poems having to do with the pugilistic trade. The main character in most of these tales is one sailor named Steve Costigan, but there are other characters in some of the tales. And some of the stories which do not feature Costigan and his bulldog buddy are still related to Costigan, these tales often being about friends and foes he has fought.

The writing is strong and gut-wrenching in places, a few of the tales being Howard at his finest, but Sword and Sorcery fans won't find the darker worlds and darker characters with whom they are more familiar. But that's not a bad thing. These tales show Howard's abilities from a different angle, and they allow him to betray burly he-men who can be deadly but aren't mad nor dark to the point of being anti-heroes.

If you're a fan of Howard's and want to learn more about what this awesome writer could write, or if you're just looking for some good old tales of men duking it out, this one is for you.