The King in Yellow is a book of short stories by American writer Robert W. Chambers, first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895. The British first edition was published by Chatto & Windus in 1895 (316 pages).
The book countains nine short stories and a sequence of poems; while the first stories belong to the genres of supernatural horror and weird fiction, The King in Yellow progressively transitions towards a more light-hearted tone, ending with romantic stories devoid of horror or supernatural elements. The horror stories are highly esteemed, and it has been described by critics such as E. F. Bleiler and T. E. D. Klein as a classic in the field of the supernatural. Lin Carter called it "an absolute masterpiece, probably the single greatest book of weird fantasy written in this country between the death of Poe and the rise of Lovecraft", and it was an influence on Lovecraft himself.
The book is named for the eponymous play-within-the-stories which recurs as a motif through the first four stories, a forbidden play which induces madness in those who read it.
Stories
The first four stories are loosely connected by three main devices:
A play in book form entitled The King in Yellow
A mysterious and malevolent supernatural and gothic entity known as the King in Yellow An eerie symbol called the Yellow Sign
These stories are macabre in tone, centering, in keeping with the other tales, on characters who are often artists or decadents, inhabitants of the demi-monde.
The first and fourth stories, "The Repairer of Reputations" and "The Yellow Sign", are set in an imagined future 1920s America, whereas the second and third stories, "The Mask" and "In the Court of the Dragon", are set in Paris. These stories are haunted by the theme: "Have you found the Yellow Sign?"
The macabre character gradually fades away during the remaining stories, and the last three are written in the romantic fiction style common to Chambers' later work. They are all linked to the preceding stories by their Parisian setting and their artistic protagonists.
List of stories
The stories in the book are: "The Repairer of Reputations" – a story of egotism and paranoia which carries the imagery of the book's title. "The Mask" – a dream story of art, love, and uncanny science. "In the Court of the Dragon" – a man is pursued by a sinister church organist who is after his soul. "The Yellow Sign" – an artist is troubled by a sinister churchyard watchman who resembles a coffin worm. "The Demoiselle d'Ys" – a time travel love story. "The Prophets' Paradise" – a sequence of eerie prose poems that develop the style and theme of a quote from the fictional play The King in Yellow which introduces "The Mask". "The Street of the Four Winds" – an atmospheric tale of an artist in Paris who is drawn to a neighbor's room by a cat; the story ends with a tragic touch. "The Street of the First Shell" – a war story set in the Paris Siege of 1870. "The Street of Our Lady of the Fields" – romantic American bohemians in Paris. "Rue Barrée" – romantic American bohemians in Paris, with a discordant ending that playfully reflects some of the tone of the first story.
The play called The King in Yellow
The fictional play The King in Yellow has at least two acts and at least three characters: Cassilda, Camilla and "the Stranger", who may or may not be the titular character.
Chambers' story collection excerpts some sections from the play to introduce the book as a whole, or individual stories. For example, "Cassilda's Song" comes from Act 1, Scene 2 of the play:
The short story "The Mask" is introduced by an excerpt from Act 1, Scene 2d:
It is also stated, in "The Repairer of Reputations", that the final moment of the first act involves the character Camilla's "agonized scream and [...] awful words echoing through the dim streets of Carcosa".
All of the excerpts come from Act I. The stories describe Act I as quite ordinary, but reading Act II drives the reader mad with the "irresistible" revealed truths: "The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect". Even seeing the first page of the second act is enough to draw the reader in: "If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it" ("The Repairer of Reputations").
Chambers usually gives only scattered hints of the contents of the full play, as in this extract from "The Repairer of Reputations":