The King in Yellow - Paperback

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers 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. The King in Yellow is a short story collection 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 contains 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, S. T. Joshi, 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 that recurs as a motif through the first four stories, a forbidden play that induces madness in those who read it.