The Weird Library

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CC C445

Robert W. Chambers

CHAMBERS, Robert W., 1865–1933


Born
26 May 1865, Brooklyn, New York, United States
Died
16 December 1933, New York, New York, United States
Note
American artist and novelist. Cataloged here for the 1895 collection, not the later popular romances.

Influence

The four “King in Yellow” stories in the 1895 collection introduce a play that unhinges its readers, and the names Carcosa, Hastur, and the Yellow Sign. Those names were later absorbed into the shared mythos around H. P. Lovecraft; the contagion-by-text device remains a tool of the field. Chambers himself moved on to popular romance; this catalog records The King in Yellow because the field did not move on from it. The debt to Arthur Machen is part of the same 1890s climate.

Launch bibliography

Works by Robert W. Chambers held, or to be held, in the Reading Room at launch. Not a complete bibliography.
Title Form First publication Call number Where to read
The King in Yellow Collection First published as The King in Yellow (New York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1895). WF C445 .K56 1895 Reading Room

The 1895 volume contains ten stories. The first four—“The Repairer of Reputations,” “The Mask,” “In the Court of the Dragon,” and “The Yellow Sign”—constitute the King in Yellow sequence. The remainder are Paris and romance tales bound with them.

Where to read

In this Library: The King in Yellow. Return to the Reading Room or the Card Catalog.

See also