Near the end of his life, Howard wrote to the renowned fantasist H.P. Lovecraft, with whom he corresponded regularly, about his favorite writers. These included Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, Mark Twain, Sax Rohmer, Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Walter Scott, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe and Lovecraft. A huge fan of poetry, Howard also sought out the verse of Robert W. Service, Kipling, Sidney Lanier, Poe, Walter de la Mare, Omar Khayyam, Henry Herbert Knibbs, G.K. Chesterton, Oscar Wilde, Tennyson, Alfred Noyes and Lovecraft, among many others.