Howard entered the navy, where Captain Frederick Marryat was his shipmate. On obtaining a discharge, he began to contribute sea stories to periodicals. When Marryat became editor of the Metropolitan Magazine in 1832, he chose Howard as his sub-editor. Howard later joined the staff of the New Monthly Magazine, which was then edited by Thomas Hood.

Edward Howard died suddenly on 30 December 1841.^[2] His widow, Anne Roper Howard, remarried in 1846, to Octavian Blewitt, secretary to the Royal Literary Fund.

Howard's Rattlin the Reefer (3 vols. London, 1836), a maritime novel, bore the inscription "edited by the author of Peter Simple. This was misunderstood to mean that Marryat wrote it. It is available free as an E-book.^[3] Howard's other works, which were mostly issued as "by the author of Rattlin the Reefer," are:

• The Old Commodore, 3 vols. London, 1837
• Outward Bound; or, a Merchant's Adventures, London, 1838; originally Ardent Troughton, the Wrecked Merchant, 1836–1837 in The Metropolitan Magazine, vol. 16–19,^[4][5] was erroneously assigned to Marryat, and under this authorship was published in translations, like French (1838),^[6] many Russian editions.^[7] and possibly others.
• Memoirs of Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, K.C.B., 2 vols. London, 1839;Volume 1 Volume 2
• Jack Ashore, 3 vols. London, 1840
• The Centiad: a Poem in four books, London, 1841
• Sir Henry Morgan, the Buccaneer, 3 vols. London, 1842 (another edition 1857)
• The Marine Ghost, in Part i. of Tales from Bentley, 1859^[2]

• Works by Edward Howard at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Edward Howard at Internet Archive