Robert E. Howard was the son of Isaac Mordecai Howard and his wife Hester Howard, née Ervin. As he wrote in a 1931 letter to the editor of the pulp magazine Weird Tales his ancestors were mostly Irish, with English, Highland Scots, and Danes in addition. Howard grew up in the barren and arid landscape of West Texas and made few trips. Growing up, he worked in the local oil fields, where, according to this letter, he experienced that "life can be a pretty nasty thing."