Her Letters to Robert E. Howard: Edna Mann

Among Robert E. Howard’s papers are several lists of addresses. One such list includes the entry:

Miss Edna Mann
Bagwell, Texas.
—Collected Letters 3.483

Bagwell is a small, unincorporated community in Red River County, bordering Oklahoma. According to Howard scholars like Patrice Louinet, the Howard family had lived in Bagwell from ~1913-1915; it was in Bagwell that a young Howard would have attended school for the first time, when he was eight years old, and it was in Bagwell that a young Howard listened to the stories of former slave Mary Bohannon.

A single letter from Howard to Edna Mann survives, written from Brownwood, TX, dated 30 Oct 1926, and beginning:

Dear Friend;

As usual I have to start my letter with an apology, but I’ve been kept busy
what with lessons, risings on my arm and rotten eyes.

I don’t know if you’re still at the same address, but if not, I suppose this
letter will be forwarded to you. The days are getting cooler. Believe me, if I ever
get wealthy, I’ll go to some country where they have summer the year round.
—Robert E. Howard to Edna Mann, 30 Oct 1926, Collected Letters 1.110

The brief letter covers what Howard has been up to (he was at the time taking a college-level bookkeeping course), the poem “The Campus at Midnight,” and signs off asking if she has seen any good American football games lately, noting “Your hometown always had a good team.”

There are no other mentions of Edna Mann in Howard’s extant letters. So, who was Edna Mann?

On the Texas Digital Newspaper archive, The Detroit (TX) News-Herald, which covers several communities in Red River County, has several mentions of a “Miss Edna Mann” in the period of 1929-1931 (e.g. 10 Jul 1930). The 1930 Federal census lists an Edna Mann, age 28, widowed with one child and working as a telephone operator living in Red River Country, Texas. A little digging through the genealogy databases turns up Myttie Edna Smith, born 19 May 1901 in Van Alstyne, TX—another newspaper account says she has relatives in Van Alstyne (23 Jan 1930). In 1919, she married Valda Jewell Mann; and gave birth to a daughter Tina Lareda on 17 Mar 1920. Valda Mann died in 15 May 1923. Edna Mann died on 1 Jan 1986, and is buried in Val Alstyne Cemetery.

Many questions remain regarding Edna Mann and Robert E. Howard. We have no idea, for example, how they became acquainted or how long their correspondence ran. It seems reasonable to surmise that they probably began correspondence between 1923 and 1926, as he addresses her as “Miss Edna Mann,” not “Mrs. Edna Mann” or “Miss Edna Smith.” Beyond that, we can only speculate.

Howard scholar Rob Roehm has suggested that Edna Mann was the “young mother” he mentioned in his semi-autobiographical novel Post Oaks & Sand Roughs (2019):

[…] Violet, the chief soda jerker, a rather pretty little blond who hummed the latest song hit while she worked and flirted with some of the customers […]

As for Violet, Steve supposed that she was merely a flapper working for the purpose of having some spending money, until one day he noticed a small child following her about, and asked:

“That’s your little sister?”

“My daughter.”

“My God, how old are you?” asked Steve bluntly.

“Twenty-five—don’t I look it?”

“Good Lord, no. I thought you were about my age.”

He never questioned her regarding her past, but gathered from remarks that she dropped that she had been supporting herself ever since she was old enough to work, that she had a husband somewhere in Oklahoma, and that she had worked in offices and jerked soda “all the way from the Great Lakes to the border of Mexico.”

More driftwood, following the oil booms. Steve felt remarkably young and inexperienced beside the girl. (170-171)

There is a little more on Violet in the short novel, but how much is fact or fiction is impossible to say.

Thanks to Dave Goudsward and Rob Roehm for their help.

---

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.