King in Yellow

Robert W. Chambers published The King in Yellow in 1895, a collection of short stories united by references to a forbidden stage play of the same name. Those who read its second act are driven irrevocably to despair and insanity.

The stories weave through the art salons of fin-de-siecle Paris, the crumbling districts of an unnamed American city, and the eldritch landscape of Carcosa — a place of twin suns and black stars where the Pallid Mask waits. Chambers drew upon Ambrose Bierce's earlier invention of Carcosa and Hastur, transforming these fragments into something altogether more unsettling.

Decades later, H.P. Lovecraft would cite Chambers as a direct influence, weaving Hastur and the Yellow Sign into his own expanding mythology. This edition preserves the ten original tales in their complete and unabridged form, accompanied by period-appropriate typography and illustration.