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        ← Back to Characters
        Works✓Poetry✓Letters✓Characters✓
        Human · Fictional / created

        Bill Lannon

        O’Donnell’s companion

        Kind
        Human
        Historicity
        Fictional / created

        Works

        The Black Bear BitesDraft 1
        Bill LannonOn Page · first: Tales of Weird Menace UE pp. 135-148

        Poetry

        Poetry appearances come from the exhaustive exact-state census of all 765 currently catalogued Poetry textual states.

        Correspondence

        ABOUT THE CATALOGUE

        REH Writings
        guide & credits

        A searchable research catalogue of Robert E. Howard’s writings and the people, animals, vessels and other story entities found in them—built for REH readers and fans as well as editors and scholars.

        699 catalogued Works709 catalogued Poems914 catalogued Letters5,574 catalogued Characters
        START HEREWhat REH Writings is

        The REH Writings plugin brings together permanent identities for Howard’s prose Works and Poetry, their distinct textual states, correspondence to and from Howard, title and name forms, dates, manuscript witnesses, publication appearances and Characters.

        It is a catalogue and research guide rather than a claim that every record is finished or that every surviving text is reproduced here. Coverage grows as reliable sources and exact texts are reviewed.

        WORKS & POETRYCompositions and textual states

        A Work is the underlying composition. One Work may survive in several Textual Versions: drafts, submitted or final typescripts, false starts, fragments, synopses, outlines, published versions or later revisions.

        • Search Howard and publication titles, manuscript titles, bylines or pseudonyms, and TSS numbers.
        • Filter by form, genre, written or published year, and recorded income.
        • Open a Work to see its textual family; open one state to inspect its exact Characters, publications and manuscript evidence.
        • The catalogue’s primary/default state is a navigation choice, not an automatic declaration of textual authority.
        • Poetry Character/entity coverage is exact-state exhaustive: all 765 currently catalogued Poetry textual states have an explicit reviewed census, including states with no qualifying entities.
        LETTERSCorrespondence, dates and participants

        Letters are correspondence documents rather than merely another publication format. The catalogue can include letters from Howard, letters to Howard, and third-party correspondence that substantially mentions Howard.

        • Filter by direction, correspondent and year, or search public extracts, subjects, letter state and TSS references.
        • Exact, circa, uncertain, before/after, date-range and postmark evidence retain their source wording instead of being collapsed to a guessed day.
        • Every distinct surviving draft, unsent or sent text is a Letter of its own; reviewed draft/later relationships remain visible. Edited printed transcriptions and original TSS pages are source evidence rather than extra Letters.
        • A complete transcription or facsimile appears only when permission and an individual user capability both allow it; restricted text is never included in public search or page HTML.
        CHARACTERSPeople, animals, vessels and names

        “Character” is the catalogue’s broad story-entity term. It includes humans, historical people, animals, ships and vessels, supernatural beings and other identifiable entities.

        • Search canonical names, aliases, nicknames, spellings and draft-specific name forms. Enable Include contextual mentions when you want broader discovery through descriptions, appearance roles and Letter context.
        • Combine Kind, Historicity, Species / type and Role / occupation filters, then limit “Found in” to Works, Poetry or Letters.
        • Appearances are tied to exact Textual Versions or correspondence roles, so a Character found in one draft or letter is not silently asserted to occur elsewhere.
        • The same name never proves the same identity. Howard reused names, while one developing Character may also change name between drafts.

        Appearance totals outside a completed exact-state audit report the evidence currently reviewed and are not always an exhaustive census of every surviving state. Poetry pages explicitly identify when the live Poetry audit still matches the complete current textual-state set.

        MANUSCRIPTSTypescripts and TSS numbers

        A TSS number is a catalogue reference for a physical manuscript or typescript unit. It is not a Work ID, a Textual Version ID or necessarily a draft number. Several TSS units may belong to one surviving textual witness.

        • You can enter a TSS number in Writings search to find its catalogued Work and state.
        • Exact manuscript features—such as strikeouts, insertions, page order, authorial corrections, bylines and wording changes—are recorded only when the available evidence supports them.
        • First Cuts or direct manuscript/typescript evidence can support page-level detail. An overview catalogue or spreadsheet may establish that a unit exists without proving everything written on its pages.
        SOURCESWhere the information comes from

        The catalogue began with earlier REH World Stories records and Howard Works (howardworks.com) bibliographic evidence, then reconciled those records into stable Work and Textual Version identities. Publication records and Contents are supplied through the companion REH Publications catalogue.

        Textual and Character research is expanded from reviewed source material, including:

        • Howard’s surviving manuscripts, typescripts and carbons, together with documented TSS catalogue evidence;
        • REH Foundation Press First Cuts volumes, which preserve draft and manuscript detail;
        • REH Foundation Press Ultimate Editions, used as restored reading-edition witnesses for the practical final/final-submission state;
        • original magazine, pulp and other publication texts when publication evidence is the available textual source;
        • source notes, bibliographies and other reviewed research used to reconcile titles, dates, relationships and surviving states.

        Source data is treated as evidence to be reviewed and reconciled, not as something to copy blindly. Documented manuscript holdings represented in these sources include material associated with the Glenn Lord collection at the University of Texas at Austin, the Robert E. Howard collection at Texas A&M University and the typescript collection at Cross Plains Library. A catalogue entry does not imply that every physical page has been directly inspected.

        Correspondence sources represented in the live Letter catalogue

        This list is generated from the retained source provenance, so it grows automatically as reviewed Letter sources are added.

        • "So Far the Poet . . ." and Other Writings
          16 source states · Edited Excerpt, Edited Transcription
        • “New” Letter from Herbert Klatt
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • A Means to Freedom, second softcover edition (2017)
          102 source states · Edited Transcription
        • Amra
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard, second edition
          373 source states · Edited Transcription
        • Crypt of Cthulhu #63
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith
          57 source states · Edited Transcription
        • Dime Sports Magazine Volume 2 Number 6
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • E. Hoffmann Price → H. P. Lovecraft supplied transcription
          39 source states · Edited Transcription
        • Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth
          43 source states · Edited Transcription
        • Glenn Lord bibliography / archived REH Two-Gun Raconteur posting
          1 source state · Edited Excerpt
        • Glenn Lord’s Ultima Thule
          3 source states · Edited Transcription
        • H. P. Lovecraft: Letters to E. Hoffmann Price and Richard F. Searight
          45 source states · Edited Transcription
        • Harold Preece and Robert E. Howard
          7 source states · Edited Excerpt
        • Herbert C. Klatt — letters and biographical notes prepared by Rob Roehm
          9 source states · Edited Transcription
        • Herbert C. Klatt — letters and memorial correspondence prepared by Rob Roehm
          2 source states · Edited Transcription
        • Howard History
          3 source states · Edited Excerpt
        • Howard History — The Vinson Papers
          4 source states · Edited Excerpt
        • Legacy reh.world Letters archive
          31 source states · Legacy Web Record
        • Locus #433
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • Lone Scout of Letters
          4 source states · Edited Transcription
        • Magazine of Horror #14
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • Mooney’s Musings — Rob Roehm
          5 source states · Edited Excerpt
        • Nyctalops #6
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard, The Final Years
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • Return to Wonder #8
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter
          39 source states · Edited Excerpt, Edited Transcription
          28 represented issues/editions
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 2 Number 2
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 3 Number 3
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 4 Number 1
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 4 Number 2
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 4 Number 4
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 5 Number 2
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 5 Number 3
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 5 Number 4
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 6 Number 3
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 6 Number 4
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 7 Number 3
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 8 Number 1
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 8 Number 2
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 11 Numbers 1 and 2
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 11 Numbers 3 and 4
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 16 Number 2
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 16 Number 3
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 16 Number 4
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 17 Number 1
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 17 Number 3
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 17 Number 4
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 18 Number 1
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 18 Number 2
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 18 Number 3
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 18 Number 4
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 19 Number 3
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 19 Number 4
          • Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter Volume 20 Number 1
        • Star-Studded Comics #15
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • Sword & Fantasy #11
          11 source states · Edited Excerpt
        • The Collected Letters of Doctor Isaac M. Howard
          146 source states · Edited Excerpt, Edited Transcription
        • The Howard Collector
          7 source states · Edited Transcription
        • The Howard Collector #11 (Volume 2 Number 5)
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • The Howard Collector #15
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • The Howard Collector #7 (Volume 2 Number 1)
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • The Howard Collector #8
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • The Science Fiction Collector #14
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        • The Selected Letters of Novalyne Price Ellis
          11 source states · Edited Transcription
        • The Selected Letters of Novalyne Price Ellis, Volume II
          72 source states · Edited Transcription
        • Yorick Fantasy Magazine 6/7
          1 source state · Edited Transcription
        CREDITS & ACKNOWLEDGMENTSProject and research foundations

        REH Writings is created and maintained by Ståle Gismervik for reh.world. The catalogue is built on decades of bibliographic, textual, archival and editorial work by the Robert E. Howard research community.

        Major source foundations currently represented include:

        • Howard Works (howardworks.com), an important bibliographic foundation for title and publication evidence;
        • the Robert E. Howard Foundation and REH Foundation Press, including First Cuts and Ultimate Editions used in exact-text research;
        • the live Correspondence sources listed above, including The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard and every additional reviewed Letter source currently represented;
        • surviving manuscript, typescript and TSS evidence represented by material associated with the Glenn Lord collection at the University of Texas at Austin, the Robert E. Howard collection at Texas A&M University and the typescript collection at Cross Plains Library;
        • original magazines, books and other primary publication witnesses;
        • the companion REH Publications catalogue on reh.world for publication records and Contents relationships.

        Individual records retain source and provenance where available. Researchers, editors, collectors and readers can be credited at the relevant source or record level when a specific contribution is known, rather than forcing every contribution into one undifferentiated master list.

        SEARCHINGUseful ways to explore
        • Try a familiar published title even when Howard used another title; reviewed title forms remain searchable.
        • Search a pseudonym or credited byline such as a publication-supplied name.
        • Search a TSS number without needing to know its Work, poem or letter title.
        • Character search is forgiving about middle initials and word order: Robert Barlow can find Robert H. Barlow.
        • Works, Poetry, Letters and Characters all support the same compact search syntax: use -word to exclude a term, for example Conan -Cimmerian, and -"exact phrase" to exclude a phrase.
        • Use quotation marks to keep a phrase together and +word when a term must be present. Keep structured questions such as Kind, Historicity and Role in the existing filters rather than building a complex Boolean query.
        • Use correspondent shortcuts for Tevis Clyde Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, Novalyne Price and other frequently represented people.
        • Combine filters: for example, a genre and year under Works, From REH plus a correspondent under Letters, or Historical / real + Letters only under Characters.
        • Open result cards for the full evidence. Compact cards deliberately summarize rather than reproduce the complete record.
        INTERPRETATIONHow evidence is treated
        • No one source is automatically best for every question. A Howard typescript may be strongest for authorial wording; a pulp proves what readers received; a restored edition may best represent the normalized final reading text.
        • Missing pages or an incomplete source cannot prove that a Character or passage was absent from the missing material.
        • A publication relationship applies to the whole Work unless the evidence identifies one exact Textual Version.
        • Stable identities are corrected conservatively: evidence is preserved, same-title and same-name records are not merged by guesswork, and uncertain points remain identified as uncertain.
        DEVELOPMENT HISTORY

        REH Writings
        changelog

        A running record of public catalogue, editorial, research and migration changes. The newest release is shown first.

        0.82.57-alphalate Poetry source-pair closureCURRENT
        • Close the single remaining companion-resolution gap exposed after REH Publications 1.3.9: 309 source-linked Contents rows / 308 Writings resolutions, with prose already complete at 232/232 and the sole residual in Verse at 76/77.
        • Identify the late pair as permanent Publication #9000000085, Barsoom número 56 → Howard Works Verse source #974, Black Michael's Story. The source identity is already reviewed against permanent Poetry Black Michael’s Story (ue-poetry:v1:p65:black-michael-s-story); no poem identity research or title matching is needed.
        • The 0.82.56 scoped live-pair rebuild ran before REH Publications 1.3.9 created this newly reviewed source appearance. Advance the scoped live-pair projection from 2.3 to 2.4 so the first administrator request after upgrade performs one fresh bounded rebuild against the current Publications source-appearance state.
        • Keep the existing authority gates unchanged: exact reviewed source Work ID, Verse/Poetry source type, external-key drift protection, unique permanent Poetry identity, current Howard Works reconciliation Publication scope, and current source appearance. No runtime title fallback and no exact Textual Version claim are introduced.
        • Ship data/poetry-publication-late-pair-closure-audit-2026-09-05.json as durable provenance for the one late pair and the observed 309/308 state.
        • Schema remains 3.12.1.
        0.82.56-alphascoped Poetry bridge event/backfill closure
        • Close the 52 REH Publications→Poetry resolution rows exported by REH Publications 1.3.7: they represent 51 distinct source-Work↔Publication pairs across 42 already-reviewed Howard Works Verse identities and 14 Publications. No new poem identity is created or inferred.
        • Confirm offline that 51 of the 52 rows use source identities already present in the fixed 726-source Poetry resolver; the remaining source #913 — And there were lethal women is already covered by the September 5 user-confirmed authority mapping to permanent Poetry The Harem.
        • Fix the live reh_publication_appearances_updated bridge so an exact source ID already present in the reviewed Verse resolver is not rejected merely because the bibliographic Contents row has a blank or generic kind. The reviewed source-resolution row supplies Verse/Poetry type authority; exact source ID and external-key drift checks remain mandatory.
        • Advance the scoped live-pair projection version to 2.3, forcing one guarded rebuild on the first administrator request after upgrade. This rebuild uses only the existing bounded Howard Works reconciliation Publication scope and the Publications source-appearance API, so the current 52 rows can gain their missing Writings Work-level appearance/provenance pairs without title matching.
        • Future Publications appearance-update events use the same corrected authority rule, preventing blank/non-specific Contents kind values from reopening this bridge-coverage gap. Static/manual Poetry history and exact Textual Version authority are untouched.
        • Ship data/poetry-publication-live-gap-closure-audit-2026-09-05.json as documentary provenance for the 52-row/51-pair review and the exact permanent Poetry identities already established for every row.
        • Schema remains 3.12.1.
        0.82.55-alphauser-confirmed Verse residual closure
        • Close the four distinct Howard Works Verse source identities behind the five remaining September Publications→Poetry residual rows using explicit site-authority confirmation from 2026-09-05. No title-only or machine-translation inference is introduced.
        • Add reviewed source mappings for Howard Works #913 — And there were lethal women → permanent Poetry The Harem, #1193 — A Haunting Cadence → the permanent poem of that title, and #1723 — Through the Mists of Silence → the permanent poem of that title.
        • Preserve the established Writings authority for Howard Works #970 — Black Dawn as the five-poem cycle/component set (Shadows (1), Clouds, Shrines, The Iron Harp (2), Invocation) rather than inventing a sixth standalone Poetry Work.
        • Extend the Writings-owned Poetry resolver contract to return a reviewed multi-link component set for this non-atomic source identity. Component Work-level publication appearances are materialized only inside the exact 86-publication Howard Works reconciliation scope.
        • Advance the scoped live Poetry source-pair version so the three direct confirmed mappings are synchronized automatically on the first administrator request. Future publication-appearance changes remain source-ID/publication-ID driven.
        • Ship the authority decision as poetry-publication-source-resolution-user-confirmed-2026-09-05.json for durable audit provenance. Schema remains 3.12.1.
        0.82.54-alphascoped Verse authority residual audit
        • Add a Scoped Verse authority audit to Poetry publication history for reviewed Howard Works Verse source identities used by the current 86-publication reconciliation corpus but absent from the bundled 726-source Poetry resolver.
        • Distinguish already-safe supplemental source mappings, exact repairable legacy authority collisions, source drift, ambiguous poem candidates, and legitimate holds where no permanent poem identity is proved.
        • Offer an explicit guarded bulk repair only when a reviewed Verse source map currently targets a non-poem Work and exactly one active permanent Poetry Work has the same normalized canonical title. Held rows are never changed.
        • Extend the Poetry resolver with a source-ID/publication-ID-only supplemental path for reviewed source maps that already target an active poem Work in the bounded Howard Works scope. No runtime title matching is introduced.
        • Materialize only Work-level publication appearances for those reviewed supplemental maps; exact Textual Version remains unasserted. Schema remains 3.12.1.
        0.82.53-alphascoped Poetry live-pair repair
        • Correct 0.82.52's over-broad live Poetry projection. The first implementation compared all 726 reviewed Verse identities against every current REH Publications appearance and could materialize thousands of historical pairs outside the September Howard Works intake.
        • Require REH Publications Integration API 1.17 and restrict the live extension to the exact Howard Works reconciliation Publication scope (local delta imports + accepted source revisions).
        • On first administrator request after upgrade, retire only relationships generated by the 0.82.52 live extension, clear its live-pair provenance option, and rebuild the scoped pairs from exact reviewed Verse source identities. Static/manual Poetry publication history is untouched.
        • Future reh_publication_appearances_updated handling is likewise scoped to Howard Works reconciliation publications. No title matching is introduced. Schema remains 3.12.1.
        0.82.52-alphaRelease notes
        • Extend the existing reviewed Poetry publication-history bridge for newly added REH Publications records without introducing a title-matching fallback. The fixed reviewed Poetry source-resolution package remains the authority for Howard Works Verse source identity; REH Publications Integration API 1.13+ supplies only the exact permanent Publication IDs in which those same source Work IDs now appear.
        • Add a guarded live source-pair projection for publication IDs created after the August Poetry package. A new pair is accepted only when the Howard Works source Work is one of the 726 already-reviewed Verse identities, its current source type/external key has not drifted, and its Poetry UE identity resolves uniquely to one active permanent poem Work. The resulting Writings relationship is Work-level only; no exact Textual Version is inferred.
        • Run one versioned backfill on the first administrator request after upgrade, and listen to reh_publication_appearances_updated so future Publications Contents changes can extend or retire these generated Poetry relationships immediately. A manual Refresh reviewed Poetry source appearances action remains available on the existing Poetry publication-history screen for recovery when Writings was inactive during a Publications change.
        • Preserve the historical static resolver pairs exactly. Runtime Poetry resolution now accepts either the original reviewed source-Work↔publication pair or one synchronized live pair recorded from the exact Publications source-appearance API; runtime title matching remains prohibited and prose stays on reh_publications_howard_writing_resolution.
        • Record live source-pair provenance separately and avoid duplicate Work↔publication rows when another reviewed/manual relationship already proves the same permanent appearance. Removed live source pairs retire only relationships generated by this extension; unrelated/manual/static evidence is untouched.
        • No schema change; schema remains 3.12.1.
        0.82.51-alphaRelease notes
        • Fix the guarded Reviewed Work-structure consolidation failure exposed by the live The Killer's Debt internal-wrapper normalization. The previous routine attempted to update both legacy_page_map and migration_permanent_text_map from retired Text #687 to surviving fragment Text #688.
        • migration_permanent_text_map.text_version_id is intentionally unique: it is the historical one-to-one ledger from each migration preview Text key to the permanent Text ID originally created. Two preview keys therefore cannot be collapsed onto one surviving Text ID, and trying to do so caused the batch to stop.
        • Internal-wrapper retirement now remaps only the live legacy_page_map route. The original permanent migration row remains historical provenance on the retired Text, whose replacement_text_version_id points to the surviving exact Text.
        • REHW_Publications_Work_Bridge v1.5 now follows that guarded replacement chain when the legacy-page fallback resolves through migration_permanent_text_map, preserving exact identity recovery without mutating the historical ledger.
        • The 0.82.50 failure path already rolled back earlier Work-structure changes from that run automatically. Installation performs no reconciliation; the administrator may retry the same explicit CONSOLIDATE REVIEWED WORK STRUCTURE batch after upgrade.
        • No schema change; schema remains 3.12.1.
        0.82.50-alphaRelease notes
        • Add a guarded Catalogue health → Reviewed duplicate Letter↔Character relations batch inside the existing generic Correspondence-maintenance workflow. It does not introduce a source-specific importer or writer.
        • Reconstruct the missing September 2 cleanup plan from the authoritative 0.82.46 handoff backup: exactly 57 active generic relation rows are proven redundant because each sits beside a richer reviewed relation for the same permanent Letter, exact source item, Character, role and certainty. The generic row remains in the database as retired provenance.
        • Preserve three non-simple same-source groups instead of flattening them: two distinct Truett Vinson occurrences in the 1977 Price→de Camp Letter, two separate Ki-Ki/Conquering Lion name-form occurrences in the Lovecraft→Price source state, and two distinct Dame Simaetha passages. Different-source evidence is never deduplicated.
        • Guard both the row being retired and the richer surviving row by permanent relation ID plus exact Letter/source/Character/name/role/certainty/context/provenance snapshot. Any drift blocks the complete transaction. Already-retired plan rows are harmless and recognized as applied.
        • Installation changes no permanent data. After the operator-reported six reviewed Character merges and the 32-state Isaac exhaustive closure, the expected pre-cleanup live state is 914 active Letters / 3,136 active Letter↔Character relations / 5,187 active Characters; applying this reviewed batch should leave 914 / 3,079 / 5,187. Schema remains 3.12.1.
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