The King in Yellow

‘… I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with horror which at all times assails me yet.’ With its strange, imaginative blend of horror, science fiction, romance and lyrical prose, Robert W. Chambers’ ‘The King in Yellow’ is a classic masterpiece of weird fiction. This series of vaguely connected stories is linked by the presence of a monstrous and suppressed book which brings fright, madness and spectral tragedy to all those who read it. An air of futility and doom pervade these pages like a sweet insidious poison. Dare you read it? This collection has been called the most important book in American supernatural fiction between Poe and the moderns. H. P. Lovecraft, creator of the famed Cthulu Mythos, whose own fiction was greatly influenced by this book stated that ‘The King in Yellow’ “achieves notable heights of cosmic fear’. AUTHOR: Robert Chambers FRSE (1802 –1871) was a Scottish author, journal editor and publisher who, like his elder brother William Chambers, the publisher and politician, was highly influential in mid-19th century scientific and political circles. He was an early member of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow the Geological Society of London, and was the anonymous author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which was so controversial that his authorship was not acknowledged until after his death.