the conan chronicles: volume 1: 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. the book was published in 2000 by gollancz as eighth volume of their fantasy masterworks series. the book, edited by stephen jones, presents the stories in their internal chronological order. most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines "the phantagraph", "weird tales", "super-science fiction", "magazine of horror" and "fantasy fiction".