Agnes de la Fere
- AGNES DE LA FERE - A black ink and black pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size coquille board, circa 1990. It appears in the book, "The Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard," edited by James Van Hise, published in 1997.
Actually, this drawing started out as a preliminary sketch back in 1977 for a Zebra Paperback book titled, "Sword Woman," written by Robert E. Howard. The stories in that book take place in the era of "The Three Musketeers," and my sketches reflected Howard's description of the attire and the type of weapons used at that time; feathered hats, pantaloons, capes, and fencing swords. But, incredibly, the editor wanted the characters to look like barbarians so that's how I drew them, she was the boss. But I still had my original sketches and this is one of them which I finished later on and sold to an art collector.
Before I agreed to do the "Sword Woman" drawings the editor's way, I tried to convince her that "Robert E. Howard's" name on the cover of the book was the key to it's sales, not a "barbarian" look. But the editor was fixated on the huge sales of Howard's "Conan the Barbarian" paperbacks, which featured the artwork of Frank Frazetta on the covers.
I said to her, "Let Howard's name do the selling of the book and let me do my job and make the artwork faithful to the story, it is not about barbarians". She responded; "Howard and Frazetta have created a whole new branch of literature, "Sword and Sorcery," which is all about barbarians! And it has a large core of fans now who are looking for sword and sorcery books to buy, and they are the ones I'm going to sell this book to. Do it my way!" So, reluctantly, I did.
I wonder what all those Conan fans who bought the book thought when they found no heroic barbarians inside, no fierce dragons, no evil magicians, no fair maidens chained over a pit of fire . . . And what did they think of my artwork? . . . It was all wrong, the entire presentation of the book was all a lie! My apologies to all of you.
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