On This Day: Robert E. Howard

All fled, all done, so lift me on the pyre;
The feast is over and the lamps expire

On June 11th, 1936, Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, Solomon Kane, Bran Mac Morn, King Kull, Cormac Mac Art, and many more legends of pulp fiction, committed suicide. Upon learning that his mother would never awake from the coma she had slipped into as her tuberculosis worsened, he left her room, walked to his car and  shot himself in the head using a borrowed pistol. The verse above was later found in his typewriter. He was just thirty years old.