[2][3] He was a champion fencer and boxer, an amateur Orientalist, and a student of the Arabic language; science-fiction author Jack Williamson, in his 1984 autobiography Wonder's Child, called E. Hoffmann Price a "real live soldier of fortune".

After numerous rejections, he sold his first piece, “Triangle with Variations,” to the magazine Droll Stories in 1924, followed almost immediately by the first of scores of acceptances by Weird Tales, "The Rajah's Gift" (January 1925).

[2] In his literary career, Hoffmann Price produced fiction for a wide range of publications, from Argosy to Terror Tales, from Speed Detective to Spicy Mystery Stories.

Price published 24 solo stories in Weird Tales between 1925 and 1950, plus three collaborations with Otis Adelbert Kline, and his works with Lovecraft, noted above.

[5] Price worked in a range of popular genres—including science fiction, horror, crime, and fantasy—but he was best known for adventure stories with Oriental settings and atmosphere.

Price also contributed to Farnsworth Wright's short-lived magazine The Magic Carpet (1930–34), along with Kline, Howard, Smith, and other Weird Tales regulars.

He was also the only man known to have met Howard and also H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith (the great "Triumvirate" of Weird Tales writers) in person.

In the 1970s and '80s he issued a series of SF, fantasy, and adventure novels, published in paperback; The Devil Wives of Li Fong (1979) is one noteworthy example.

His writing friends and colleagues included Richard L. Tierney, H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Henry Kuttner, Seabury Quinn, Otis Adelbert Kline, Ralph Milne Farley, Robert Spencer Carr, and Farnsworth Wright among others.

[9] When Lovecraft visited New Orleans in June 1932, Howard telegraphed Price to alert him to the visitor's presence, and the two writers spent much of the following week together.

They even proposed at one time forming a writing team whose output would, "conservatively estimated, run to a million words a month", in Lovecraft's whimsical prediction.

"[15] The story appeared under both authors' bylines in the July 1934 issue of Weird Tales; Price's draft was published as "The Lord of Illusion" in Crypt of Cthulhu No.