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Robert William Chambers

The King In Yellow

The King in Yellow is a fascinating, almost two-faced work. The first half consists of five legendary weird tales, loosely tied together by a fictional play — the eponymous King in Yellow — that drives those who read it mad. Celebrated by authors like H. P. Lovecraft and Lin Carter, these stories are classic tales of madness, despair, and strange happenings.
With the fifth tale the reader finds a sort of palate-cleansing collection of short prose-poems leading into the last four stories, which take a sharp turn away from the weird and into the romantic. The concluding tales are set in the Parisian art world.
In modern times The King in Yellow enjoys a reputation largely due to the strength of its first half of macabre tales, but by no means does that make the second half less enjoyable. Both halves are written in a quick, light prose style that demonstrates why Chambers was a best-seller in his day.
259 printed pages
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Impressions

  • Tatiana Yanovichshared an impression5 years ago
    🔮Hidden Depths

Quotes

  • Peter Gazaryanhas quoted4 years ago
    “Who is this for?” I asked.
    Haw­berk ex­plained, that in ad­di­tion to the treas­ures of ar­mour in the Met­ro­pol­itan Mu­seum of which he had been ap­poin­ted ar­mourer, he also had charge of sev­eral col­lec­tions be­long­ing to rich am­a­teurs.
  • антонhas quoted4 years ago
    Then she asked me in her soft quaint ac­cent how I had passed the night, and whether I was very much in­con­veni­enced by wear­ing the clothes which old Pela­gie had put there for me while I slept. I looked at my own clothes and shoes, dry­ing in the sun by the garden-wall, and hated them. What hor­rors they were com­pared with the grace­ful cos­tume which I now wore! I told her this laugh­ing, but she agreed with me very ser­i­ously.

    “We will throw them away,” she said in a quiet voice.
  • антонhas quoted4 years ago
    For some time I tossed about the bed try­ing to get the sound of his voice out of my ears, but could not. It filled my head, that mut­ter­ing sound, like thick oily smoke from a fat-ren­der­ing vat or an odour of noi­some de­cay. And as I lay and tossed about, the voice in my ears seemed more dis­tinct, and I began to un­der­stand the words he had muttered. They came to me slowly as if I had for­got­ten them, and at last I could make some sense out of the sounds. It was this:

    “Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

    “Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

    “Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

On the bookshelves

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