The Sword of Conan

Conan the Barbarian Original Series #3

by Robert E. Howard

Contains the following stories:
1. The People of the Black Circle (Page 1 ~ )
2. The Slithering Shadow (Page 91 ~ )
3. The Pool of the Black One (Page 129 ~ )
4. Red Nails (Page 162 ~ )

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

251 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Robert Ervin Howard was an American pulp writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, boxing, western, and detective fiction. Howard wrote "over three-hundred stories and seven-hundred poems of raw power and unbridled emotion" and is especially noted for his memorable depictions of "a sombre universe of swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror."

He is well known for having created—in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales—the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can only be compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.

—Wikipedia

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gnome Press was a small publishing company that brought many classic science fiction and fantasy titles into book form for the first time; they were active from the very late 1940's into the very early 1960's. The company was run by David A. Kyle and Martin Greenberg (not the famous anthologist of later years), and was plagued by charges of questionable practices and a small budget, but nonetheless were instrumental in advancing the field. Among the most famous of their books was the first publication of Howard's Conan stories since they had appeared in Weird Tales magazine in the 1930's. They produced a seven-volume series (including two written in posthumous collaboration with L. Sprague de Camp), of which this was the second, in 1952. The Gnome books were the forerunners of the famous Lancer series that made Conan, Howard, and Frank Frazzetta household names in the late 1960's-early 1970's. The stories included are The People of the Black Circle, The Slithering Shadow, The Pool of the Black One, and Red Nails, some of the best in the Howard Conan canon. It's great stuff, by Crom!

[Joshua Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the strongest of the three collection's I've read so far. Most notably, the two novella-length stories were quite strong, Red Nails being the jewel of this collection. I'm enjoying these early fantasy tales.