Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} by Robert W. Chambers The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 65591e8ffbaa15e0 • Your IP : 188.246.226.140 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. The King in Yellow PDF Book by Robert W. Chambers (1895) Download or Read Online. The King in Yellow PDF book by Robert W. Chambers Read Online or Free Download in ePUB, PDF or MOBI eBooks. Published in 1895 the book become immediate popular and critical acclaim in horror, fiction books. The main characters of The King in Yellow novel are John, Emma. The book has been awarded with Booker Prize, Edgar Awards and many others. One of the Best Works of Robert W. Chambers. published in multiple languages including English, consists of 224 pages and is available in Paperback format for offline reading. The King in Yellow PDF Details. Author: Robert W. Chambers Book Format: Paperback Original Title: The King in Yellow Number Of Pages: 224 pages First Published in: 1895 Latest Edition: September 24th 2016 Language: English Generes: Horror, Fiction, Short Stories, Fantasy, Classics, Fantasy, Weird Fiction, Gothic, Mystery, Literature, 19th Century, Romance, Formats: audible mp3, ePUB(Android), kindle, and audiobook. The book can be easily translated to readable Russian, English, Hindi, Spanish, Chinese, Bengali, Malaysian, French, Portuguese, Indonesian, German, Arabic, Japanese and many others. Please note that the characters, names or techniques listed in The King in Yellow is a work of fiction and is meant for entertainment purposes only, except for biography and other cases. we do not intend to hurt the sentiments of any community, individual, sect or religion. DMCA and Copyright : Dear all, most of the website is community built, users are uploading hundred of books everyday, which makes really hard for us to identify copyrighted material, please contact us if you want any material removed. The King in Yellow Read Online. Please refresh (CTRL + F5) the page if you are unable to click on View or Download buttons. The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. From and To can't be the same language. That page is already in . Something went wrong. Check the webpage URL and try again. Sorry, that page did not respond in a timely manner. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Something went wrong, please try again. Try using the Translator for the Microsoft Edge extension instead. Peat Long's Blog. My ramblings on Fantasy, Writing, and Anything Else I Like. The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. Welcome to the next installment in my Retro Reviews! This time, we’ll be visiting the gothic and horror filled fringes of the genre – if indeed this is still fantasy – with a trip through a classic collection of short stories: The King in Yellow . The genre part of this is important. Most people would recognise this as Horror. Some – including me – would argue it’s Fantasy too. I do not believe in one precluding the other. But its not mainstream modern Fantasy. I have no qualms about including it due to its influence; I do have a few about my ability to review it properly given I am not as familiar with the conventions of such work as I am with others. Review it I will anyway, starting in verse form. Pallid types drift by In all eyes there’s a question Where’s the Yellow Sign? Incidentally, short story collections are murder to write poetical mini-reviews of, and I’m really regretting this gimmick right now. What’s it all about? The King in Yellow is a short story collection that kind of splits in two. The first four stories and the sixth are linked by the ‘The King in Yellow’, a play that drives people mad, and things associated with it. The other five stand alone, although all are set in France, unlike the King in Yellow parts which are mostly set in the USA. They’re mostly brooding gothic-supernatural horror stories of the sort where people’s everyday lives get stranger and stranger until gibbering madness sets in; the French set stories tend to feel more fantastical and romantic, but there’s not that much different. How readable is it? I’m not a short story collection guy so take this with a pinch of salt but I found this took a lot of chewing. That said, I think that’s as much due to the density of detail as any datedness from the prose. Is it any good though? One of the reasons I dislike short story collections is some will be very good and some won’t, and how do you rate the whole damn thing? The Repairer of Reputations , the first story, was very engaging indeed. The last three stories did very little for me. The Demoiselle d’Ys was a lovely haunted fairy tale. I found The Yellow Sign creepy but didn’t quite understand what was happening enough to really engage. And so on. As a whole, I did enjoy this collection but didn’t find it consistent enough to go further. The first five stories are very much worth seeking out for fans of the uncanny though and a good example of how oblique references can give more tension than detail. How Important is this book? Lovecraft put more than a few King in Yellow references into his own work, and it’s very easy to see an influence in the way Lovecraft shared Chambers’ love of the oblique reference to supernatural terrors. As such a direct precursor, it’s pretty darn important. It’s not difficult to find it being name-checked in other fantasy works, such as Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles (from which I first learned of this book), Marion Zimmer Bradley’s works, and so on. What about the author? Chambers never wrote anything else with the same reputation, and generally put out relatively little in the same weird fiction vein. something Lovecraft lamented. Like his latter-day fan, Chambers’ work includes more than a few hints of a racist mindset, although there’s argument on condonement vs satire out there and relatively little (that I can find) about how far it might have ran in his personal life. I originally read it as satire; looking further abroad, I’m not so sure, but not convinced he condoned it at this point. As might be guessed from the contents of the collection, he did live in France for a considerable period of time, and worked as an artist (something that also obvious from the stories). It’s quite possible seeing the ravages of syphilis in Paris affected the fears that line this book. Other possible sources for his fears include Wilde’s Salome and a fear of the downfall of society. Or possibly it’s all of it together. All in all, he seemed to lead a very interesting and worried life. Conclusion. I have reached the conclusion and don’t truly have one. How good is The King in Yellow ? I’m still puzzling out my feelings. Where does Chambers stand in the conversation of speculative fantastical fiction’s history of changing social attitudes? Not quite sure. Would I recommend it? Probably to some, maybe not to others. But, I guess, on balance, I’m glad I read it. And that’s the main thing. The King in Yellow. All our eBooks are FREE to download! sign in or create a new account. EPUB 300 KB. Kindle 360 KB. $2.99. Support epubBooks by making a small PayPal donation purchase . Description. 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 Amercian 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.’ The stories inspired production of the HBO TV series True Detective . 286 pages, with a reading time of. 4.5 hours (71,546 words) , and first published in 1895. This DRM-Free edition published by epubBooks , 2014 . Community Reviews. Your Review. Sign up or Log in to rate this book and submit a review. There are currently no other reviews for this book. Excerpt. “Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que la nôtre…. Voila toute la différence.” Toward the end of the year 1920 the Government of the United States had practically completed the programme, adopted during the last months of President Winthrop’s administration. The country was apparently tranquil. Everybody knows how the Tariff and Labour questions were settled. The war with Germany, incident on that country’s seizure of the Samoan Islands, had left no visible scars upon the republic, and the temporary occupation of Norfolk by the invading army had been forgotten in the joy over repeated naval victories, and the subsequent ridiculous plight of General Von Gartenlaube’s forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per cent and the territory of Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling station. The country was in a superb state of defence. Every coast city had been well supplied with land fortifications; the army under the parental eye of the General Staff, organized according to the Prussian system, had been increased to 300,000 men, with a territorial reserve of a million; and six magnificent squadrons of cruisers and battle-ships patrolled the six stations of the navigable seas, leaving a steam reserve amply fitted to control home waters. The gentlemen from the West had at last been constrained to acknowledge that a college for the training of diplomats was as necessary as law schools are for the training of barristers; consequently we were no longer represented abroad by incompetent patriots. The nation was prosperous; Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had risen from its ruins, white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good architecture was replacing bad, and even in New York, a sudden craving for decency had swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets had been widened, properly paved and lighted, trees had been planted, squares laid out, elevated structures demolished and underground roads built to replace them. The new government buildings and barracks were fine bits of architecture, and the long system of stone quays which completely surrounded the island had been turned into parks which proved a god-send to the population. The subsidizing of the state theatre and state opera brought its own reward. The United States National Academy of Design was much like European institutions of the same kind. Nobody envied the Secretary of Fine Arts, either his cabinet position or his portfolio. The Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a much easier time, thanks to the new system of National Mounted Police. We had profited well by the latest treaties with France and England; the exclusion of foreign-born Jews as a measure of self-preservation, the settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration, the new laws concerning naturalization, and the gradual centralization of power in the executive all contributed to national calm and prosperity. When the Government solved the Indian problem and squadrons of Indian cavalry scouts in native costume were substituted for the pitiable organizations tacked on to the tail of skeletonized regiments by a former Secretary of War, the nation drew a long sigh of relief. When, after the colossal Congress of Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their graves and kindness and charity began to draw warring sects together, many thought the millennium had arrived, at least in the new world which after all is a world by itself. But self-preservation is the first law, and the United States had to look on in helpless sorrow as Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium writhed in the throes of Anarchy, while Russia, watching from the Caucasus, stooped and bound them one by one. In the city of New York the summer of 1899 was signalized by the dismantling of the Elevated Railroads. The summer of 1900 will live in the memories of New York people for many a cycle; the Dodge Statue was removed in that year. In the following winter began that agitation for the repeal of the laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final fruit in the month of April, 1920, when the first Government Lethal Chamber was opened on Washington Square. The King in Yellow. 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 entity known as The King in Yellow. An eerie symbol called the Yellow Sign. The color yellow signifies the decadent and aesthetic attitudes that were fashionable at the turn of the 19th century, typified by such publications as The Yellow Book , a literary journal associated with Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. It has also been suggested that the color yellow represents quarantine — an allusion to decay, disease, and specifically mental illness. For instance, the famous short story The Yellow Wallpaper , involving a bedridden woman's descent into madness, was published shortly before Chambers' book. These stories are macabre in tone, centering on characters that are often artists or decadents. The first story The Repairer of Reputations , is set in an imagined future 1920s America, whose history, being at odds with the knowledge of the reader, adds to the effect of its unreliable narrator. The next three are set in Paris at the same time. The other stories in the book do not follow the macabre theme of the first four, and most are written in the romantic fiction style common to Chambers' later work. Some are linked to the preceding stories by their Parisian setting and artistic protagonists. List of stories [ edit | edit source ] The stories present in the book are: The Play The King in Yellow [ edit | edit source ] The fictional play The King in Yellow has two acts, and at least three characters: Cassilda, Camilla, and the King in Yellow. Chambers' story collection excerpts sections from the play to introduce the book as a whole, or individual stories. For example, "Cassilda's Song" comes from Act I, Scene 2 of the play: Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink beneath the lake, The shadows lengthen In . Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies But stranger still is Lost Carcosa. Songs that the Hyades shall sing, Where flap the tatters of the King, Must die unheard in Dim Carcosa. Song of my soul, my voice is dead; Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa. The short story The Mask is introduced by an excerpt from Act I, Scene 2d: Camilla: You, sir, should unmask. Stranger: Indeed? Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We have all laid aside disguise but you. Stranger: I wear no mask. Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask! 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 of 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 : “ He mentioned the establishment of the Dynasty in Carcosa, the lakes which connected , Aldebaran and the mystery of the Hyades. He spoke of Cassilda and Camilla, and sounded the cloudy depths of Demhe, and the Lake of Hali. "The scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever," he muttered, but I do not believe Vance heard him. Then by degrees he led Vance along the ramifications of the Imperial family, to Uoht and Thale, from Naotalba and Phantom of Truth, to Aldones, and then tossing aside his manuscript and notes, he began the wonderful story of the Last King. „ A similar passage occurs in "The Yellow Sign", in which two protagonists have read The King in Yellow : The King in Yellow. "This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa, where black stars hang in the heavens, where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali; and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask." Reader, have you ever wondered who struck fear into the heart of H. P. Lovecraft? It was Robert Chambers. Now, the terror visits you. A wicked link in a terrifying lineage, the tales contained in The King in Yellow have inspired generations of American horror writing. Look toward unspeakable Hastur and tell yourself these are only tales. Behold the Yellow Sign and convince yourself that, after all—it’s only a book. Welcome, dear reader, to Carcosa. Edited with notes and introduction by John Edgar Browning. Features nineteen original illustrations by Mike Jackson. SHIPS APRIL 10, 2018. "This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa, where black stars hang in the heavens, where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali; and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask." Reader, have you ever wondered who struck fear into the heart of H. P. Lovecraft? It was Robert Chambers. Now, the terror visits you. A wicked link in a terrifying lineage, the tales contained in The King in Yellow have inspired generations of American horror writing. Look toward unspeakable Hastur and tell yourself these are only tales. Behold the Yellow Sign and convince yourself that, after all—it’s only a book. Welcome, dear reader, to Carcosa. Edited with notes and introduction by John Edgar Browning. Features nineteen original illustrations by Mike Jackson. The King in Yellow (part 1) Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) studied art in Paris in the late 80's and early 90's, where his work was displayed at the Salon. However, shortly after returning to America, he decided to spend his time in writing. He became popular as the writer of a number of romantic novels, but is now best known as the author of "The King In Yellow". This is a collection of the first half of this work of short stories which have an eerie, other- worldly feel to it; but the stories in the second half are essentially love stories, strongly coloured by the author's life as an artist in France. Only the first half of the collection of stories is presented here: the earlier stories are all coloured by the background presence of a play, "The King In Yellow" itself, which corrupts those who read it, and opens them to horrible experiences and to visions of a ghastly other world, lit by dark stars and distorted skies. This half of the collection is completed by a few very short pieces and two rather strange and beautiful stories of love and time, loneliness and death. (summary by Peter Yearsley) Genre(s): Horror & Supernatural Fiction, Detective Fiction, Short Stories. The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. “What is it?” I asked. “ The King in Yellow .” I was dumbfounded. Who had placed it there? I had long ago decided that I should never open that book, and nothing on earth could have persuaded me to buy it. Fearful lest curiosity might tempt me to open it, I had never even looked at it in bookstores. If I ever had had any curiosity to read it, the awful tragedy of young Castaigne, whom I knew, prevented me from exploring its wicked pages. I had always refused to listen to any description of it, and indeed, nobody ever ventured to discuss the second part aloud, so I had absolutely no knowledge of what those leaves might reveal. I stared at the poisonous mottled binding as I would at a snake. “Don’t touch it. ” Robert William Chambers (1865-1933) was an American illustrator and writer, best known for The King in Yellow , his influential and odd collection of ten macabre and French short stories first published in 1895. The title refers to a fictional play featured in four of the stories, and to a mysterious and malevolent supernatural entity within that play who may very well exist outside of it. It is whispered that the play leaves only insanity and sorrow in its wake; it tempts those who read it, bringing upon them hallucinations and madness . . . Influencing the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler, George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, and Nic Pizzolato (creator and writer of HBO’s True Detective ), and described by critics as a classic in the field of the supernatural, The King in Yellow – with its dashes of fantasy, mystery, mythology, romance, and science fiction – is a staple of the early gothic and Victorian horror genres. “Very genuine is the strain of horror . . . really achieves notable heights of cosmic fear." Worth the hassle? Yes, absolutely. The King in Yellow is a fantastic read. Chambers’ “weird” stories really are as great as everyone praises them to be. Even at 122-years-old, they hardly show their age and still manage to induce terror. “The Repairer of Reputations” is exactly the right story with which to begin this book because upon its conclusion, gobsmacked with the realization that at some point recently our unreliable narrator had completely lost his goddamn mind, you’re left trying to pinpoint: when did the madness begin? This question seems to expertly set the stage for routine exploration throughout the other nine stories, no matter that their genres segue from weird to horror to a twinge of sci-fi before settling comfortably into romance, culminating with the melancholic yet understated “Rue Barrée.” A story that seems to get panned far more than it should as one of Chambers’ more tedious Paris romances (certainly not as tedious as “The Street of Our Lady of the Fields”), its placement at the end of this book, I’ve realized, is not without exacting purpose because its final sentence so succinctly (albeit indirectly) answers the lingering question threaded through all the stories: How does madness begin? Chambers ends his masterpiece book having finally arrived at the simple, tragic answer: the heart breaks. It is my sincere hope that you will enjoy this book at least as much as I have enjoyed reading, designing, and re-reading (and re-reading) it. Sheridan Cleland Co-Heathen November 2017. Heathenry (Let Us Preface) The Repairer of Reputations The Mask In the Court of the Dragon The Yellow Sign The Demoiselle D’ys The Prophet’s Paradise The Studio The Phantom The Sacrifice Destiny The Throng The Jester The Green Room The Love Test. “ The King in Yellow remains today a masterpiece of its kind, and with the work of Edgar Allen Poe and , shares the distinction of having contributed to the famed of H.P.Lovecraft.” –. “The King in Yellow and his legendary city of Carcosa may be the most famous character and setting you’ve never heard of . . . It should not be surprising that Lovecraft incorporated Chambers’ The King in Yellow into his overarching Cthulhu mythos.” –Michael M. Hughes, io9.com. “Chambers’ King in Yellow is the more successful precursor to Lovecraft’s Cthulu. He’s a being who makes the reader shudder not because of how he looks or what he does, but because he inspires such eloquently expressed terror in the characters who encounter him.” –Etelka Lehoczky, NPR. “It is a masterpiece . . . I have read many portions several times, captivated by the unapproachable tints of the painting. None but a genius of the highest order could do such work.” –Edward Ellis. “The most eccentric little volume of its day, The King in Yellow is subtly fascinating, and compels attention for its style, and its wealth of strange imaginative force.” – Times Herald. “Every story of The King in Yellow has something riveting about it . . . so perfectly realized, they became the model for much of twentieth-century horror/fantasy. The horror comes from character, superbly rendered detail, and an uncanny ability to suggest rather than declaim. ‘The Repairer of Reputations’ is one of the finest stories in the English language.” – New York Press. “Authors like Chambers were restrained in defining every detail of the universes they created, while taking pains to suggest that there is just so much more happening beneath the surface . . . It’s the very indirectness of the way he references The King in Yellow , these little drops of the hat, that has caused later writers to be so fascinated by what he explicitly left unsaid.” –S.T. Joshi. “Although The King in Yellow has been an obscure reference indeed for most of the last hundred years, it was truly ahead of its time. It is one of the first fictional meta-books, a literary device that has been used since by authors as diverse as Agatha Christie, Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, and Vladimir Nabokov . . . It also happens to echo the best principles of great modern design: It’s what isn’t there that makes it so appealing.” –John Brownlee, Fast Co. Heathen Edition #1: The King in Yellow. Retail: $12.95 Published: December 15, 2017 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches Weight: 12.5 ounces Cover: Matte Finish Interior: Black & White on Cream Paper Pages: 260 (+2 POD) Language: English Annotated: Yes Illustrations: 4. Title Page Heathenry Flame Honorary Heathen Headshot End Page. ISBN-10: 1948316013 ISBN-13: 9781948316019 ASIN: 1948316013 Categories: The King in Yellow. Nightmare imagery courses through these stories like blood through the veins. In “The Repairer of Reputations,” a Lethal Chamber stands at the edge of Washington Square Park, open to all who can no longer bear the sorrows of life. A Parisian sculptor discovers a liquid solution that can turn any living thing—a lily, a goldfish, a love-struck young woman—to stone in “The Mask.” The unnamed narrator of “In the Court of the Dragon” seeks respite in a church only to be driven mad by organ music that no one else can hear. Nothing is stranger or more frightening, however, than The King in Yellow , the play that links these tales to one another and to a larger fictional universe containing the ghost stories of Ambrose Bierce, the cosmic horror of H. P. Lovecraft, and the first season of the critically acclaimed HBO series True Detective . Said to induce insanity and despair in those who read it, little is known for certain about the play beyond the ravings of those who have dared to open its pages. They speak of Carcosa, where black stars hang in the heavens. Of twin suns sinking into the Lake of Hali. Of the Yellow Sign and the Pallid Mask. And, in dread-filled whispers or lunatic shouts, of the King in Yellow himself, come to rule the world. A masterpiece of weird fiction, Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow holds the answer to countless mysteries—some of which might just be better left unsolved. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices. The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. Collection of «The King in Yellow» consists of ten stories, but only the first four are connected with the king mentioned in the title. “The King in Yellow” – a fictional piece, which says that anyone who gets to the second act, is crazy. Actually, in the first story we just meet with the characters, somehow coming into contact with that damn play. These stories I liked – something in the spirit of horror stories about the coffin on wheels, paranoia and madness, that whisper in the dark telling the audience breathless. When reading I often recollected Ambrose Bierce, and, as it turned out, not without reason. Referred to a fictional place “Karkosa” and a few mysterious names Chambers borrowed from him. (And Chambers of something then borrowed Lovecraft.) The fifth story is already directly connected with not mind which reduces the play. This rather gloomy romantic story. However, the mysterious names are repeated, and if the characters are out of time and space. Sixth story – very strange set of micro-stories (literally a few lines), I, to be honest, is not fully understood, but there is a feeling that if you read it a few times in a row, you can fall into a trance. The remaining three of the story – do not mysticism, but a very real things. One – the siege of Paris in 1870, and two more – touching romantic stories from the life of the Art Students living in the Latin Quarter. Reading the seventh story, I wondered, where is the king of yellow or even some unsold gravedigger chasing heroes in nightmares, but the story was pretty scary and dark, so I did not insist on the presence of more and madmen. But when reading the last two stories my bewilderment grew and grew, and suddenly when the book is over, I somehow do not even believe that this is the end. The King In Yellow by Robert W Chambers and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard (graphic novel review). The original ‘The King In Yellow’ was published in 1895 as a collection of ten short stories, of which the first four are loosely connected examples of weird fiction. They share a number of motifs, including references to a play, the eponymous ‘The King In Yellow’, that causes anyone to read the second act to go mad. Whether the play is simply a drama of curious power or somehow connected to a supernatural entity of the same name is unclear and perhaps was never intended to be consistent. But, over the years, these stories have been seen as early examples of the sort of shared universe H.P. Lovecraft created for his stories. Indeed, later authors, including August Derleth, even went so far as to include ‘The King In Yellow’ as an entity within the Cthulhu Mythos he was busily creating as the effective executor of Lovecraft’s literary estate. Putting that aside, the first four stories of the ‘The King In Yellow’ are certainly important examples of weird fiction and rightly regarded by the likes of S.T. Joshi as classics. I.N.J. Culbard has skilfully adapted them into the graphic novel format, nailing its fin de siècle atmosphere without feeling stuffy or slow. The stories are not told in quite the same order as in the original collection though, with the third story, ‘The Yellow Sign’, swapping places with ‘In The Court Of The Dragon’ as the final one in Culbard’s collection. Arguably, what this does is give the four stories as presented a more linear feeling, with the final panels of ‘In The Court Of The Dragon’ ending the collection on a psychedelic note, apparently delivering the protagonist into the arms of the King in Yellow. But let us take each story in turn. The first is ‘The Repairer Of Reputations’, is set in an alternate reality America, militaristic and imperialistic after the fashion of the old European empires. Culbard sets the weirdness up at once, opening the story at the inauguration of the nation’s first Lethal Chamber, apparently some sort of state-run euthanasia device built within a magnificent circular building rather like a Roman temple. The central protagonist is Hildred Castaigne, who comes across a strange man called Wilde with a small body, huge head and prosthetic ears. Wilde is the repairer of reputations, one to whom those who have lost their social standing turn to. While all of this seems straightforward enough, we have no real idea how much of this is true. The original 1895 version of Chambers has the story set in 1920, but doesn’t quite play it straight and instead only mentions a particular year, 1919, towards the end of his adaptation. At the very end, we have a final page that’s explicitly set in 1895, but this time involves a book and various personal effects belong to a mental patient, apparently the same Castaigne, being handed over to a friend. Is everything we see in ‘The Repairer Of Reputations’ therefore simply the delusions of a sick mind? Certainly, the idea of a completely unreliable narrator is something Chambers wanted from this story and taken on its own merits, Culbard’s version perhaps just simplifies that into something that works better as a graphic novel. Where Culbard stretches things a bit is how the book featured at the end of ‘The Repairer Of Reputations’ now crops up in the next story in the collection, ‘The Mask’. This isn’t unwarranted, mind you, the Parisian sculptor, Boris, who features in ‘The Mask’ is presumably meant to be the young sculptor, Boris Yvain, whose death is mentioned in ‘The Repairer Of Reputations’. What Culbard is doing then is creating a more explicit sense of a shared universe with not just common motifs but common objects being passed between them. Set in Paris, the main story concerns an artist who has found a way to turn living tissue into solid stone, starting with flowers and fish. Eventually, his model, Geneviève, comes across to the book and, being already unwell in her madness, seems to use the petrifying liquid on herself. Of the four stories in this collection, ‘The Mask’ is probably the one where Culbard strays least from the original, but the ‘tattered mantle’ of the King in Yellow is revealed more openly as a metaphor, perhaps, of a world in decay. By the time we get to ‘The Yellow Sign’, this is made obvious in the opening scene. The protagonist, the artist Scott, is painting his model, Tessie, but, despite his best efforts, the portrait comes out in sickly shades of green. It seems that they have a shared experience of sorts: Tessie haunted in her dreams and Scott hounded in reality but a same, strange-looking man driving a horse-drawn hearse. Scott now owns the ‘The King In Yellow’ book that Castaigne had, passed on to Boris Yvain. When Scott finds Tessie in his library and tries to get her to stop reaching for the book, it becomes clear that in fact it is too late. They have both already read the play. Again, Culbard somewhat tweaks the ending to clarify its ambiguity: Scott wakes up in a hospital, the book lying open on his bedsheets. Finally, we reach ‘In The Court Of The Dragon’, which Culbard chooses to provide a sort of resolution to the entire sequence. He does this by having the unnamed protagonist of the original being the artist Scott from ‘The Yellow Sign’. The location switches to Paris (as it is in the Chambers version) which means that while the events of ‘The Yellow Sign’ might well be set in the US from Scott’s perspective, that may only be in his imagination. Regardless, the events of this story form more of a sequence of experiences: a church service, the overwhelming music created by the organ player, an apparent pursuit through the streets of Paris and, finally, Scott’s encounter with the King in Yellow. But given this may all be in the mind of a lunatic, just how much of this are we to take at face value? Culbard’s take on these four stories is certainly worthwhile and he does a really good job of making them readable. Whether he completely nails the subtle details of the originals is hard to say. There’s a lot going on in the Chambers stories and they do need a bit of re-reading to become even adequately resolved. Indeed, it’s likely Chambers didn’t want us to feel like we understood what was going on and even if there was a bit of a shared universe here, a strictly linear retelling of the four tales may be oversimplifying them. Still, there’s a lot here to like and, while Chambers isn’t as well known today as Lovecraft, his influence on popular culture is significant, with the King in Yellow motif having been recently revitalised as a key plot element in HBO’s ‘True Detective’ series. In short, while the Culbard adaptations of Lovecraft stories are good but don’t really bring anything new to the table, his adaptation of ‘The King In Yellow’ deserve to make Chambers’ stories much more familiar to fans of weird fiction and do it skilfully and imaginatively. (pub: SelfMadeHero, 2020. 144 page pocket-sized paperback. Price: £ 9.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-91059-394-3)