Robert W. Chambers The King in Yellow: Cosmic Horror and Weird Tales Illustrated Collection

In 1895, a young American writer named Robert W. Chambers published a slim book of stories built around a fictional play so disturbing that anyone who read it lost their mind. The play was called The King in Yellow. The book of the same name went on to quietly reshape horror fiction forever.Without Chambers, there is no Lovecraft as we know him. The yellow sign, the lost city of Carcosa, the forbidden text that destroys its readers — these ideas seeped into weird fiction and never left. You can trace their fingerprints through Lovecraft, Karl Edward Wagner, Thomas Ligotti, and right up to the first season of True Detective.This edition brings together Chambers's strongest weird tales in one illustrated volume:The King in YellowThe Maker of MoonsThe MessengerThe Case of Mr. HelmerThe Purple EmperorThe White ShadowPasseurThe Key to GriefA Matter of InterestOut of the DepthsWhat sets Chambers apart from later cosmic horror writers is restraint. He rarely shows you the monster. The dread comes from a half-glimpsed symbol, a stranger's odd remark, the wrong line of a play read at the wrong moment. The horror is in what the characters know, and what knowing does to them.Original illustrations throughout. A book for readers who already love Lovecraft and want to go back to the source, and for anyone who wants to understand where modern weird fiction actually came from.Available in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover. Read more