The People of the Black Circle

The People of the Black Circle is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities . . . there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars. . . . Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand . . . to tread
the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet

Robert E. Howard was the son of Isaac Mordecai Howard and his wife Hester Howard, née Ervin. As he wrote in a 1931 letter to the editor of the pulp magazine Weird Tales his ancestors were mostly Irish, with English, Highland Scots, and Danes in addition. Howard grew up in the barren and arid landscape of West Texas and made few trips. Growing up, he worked in the local oil fields, where, according to this letter, he experienced that "life can be a pretty nasty thing."