The King in Yellow
by Robert W. Chambers
annotated by S. T. Joshi
Robert W. Chambers’s short story collection The King in Yellow (1895) has become a classic of weird fiction. It was praised by H. P. Lovecraft as a book that “achieves notable heights of cosmic fear”. Its first several stories are interconnected narratives featuring recurring characters as well as a hideous play entitled The King in Yellow that induces madness in anyone who reads it. Such figures from that play as Cassilda, Camilla, and especially the King in Yellow himself have gone on to inspire dozens of writers to write stories inspired by Chambers’s conception—which he himself derived in part from Ambrose Bierce.
Included in the volume are such memorable tales as “The Repairer of Reputations,” which depicts a nightmare future of euthanasia chambers and a man who battles the King in Yellow for rulership of the world; “The Mask,” an exquisitely beautiful story of a woman turned into marble; “The Yellow Sign,” a towering work of gruesomeness and morbidity; and “The Demoiselle d’Ys,” in which a man drifts insensibly into the medieval past.
After a mesmerising series of prose poems, “The Prophet’s Paradise,” The King in Yellow concludes with several memorable tales of the Franco-Prussian War of 187-71, in which Chambers—who studied art in Paris before writing his book—chronicles the grimness of war and the struggles of civilians to survive in its midst.
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Illustrated by Jeremy Hush
Hardcover Edition
264 pages. Hardcover bound in black cloth with gold foil stamping, and dust jacket. Smyth-sewn binding, gold ribbon bookmark, black and gold head and tail bands. Offset printed on acid-free archival paper, with gold gilded edges.
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About the Author
Robert W. Chambers (1865–1933) was an American artist and author who achieved considerable success in his lifetime; one of the most successful literary careers of his period, by some estimates. His late-career historical, adventure and romance novels sold well and a handful achieved bestseller status; but his reputation today rests largely on The King in Yellow, a work that, like its titular play, may itself induce madness and terror in those who read it.
