The King in Yellow / The Mystery of Choice (Collected Weird Fiction of Robert W. Chambers): Chambers, Robert W., Dziemianowicz, Stefan

THE KING IN YELLOW and THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE Robert W.

Chambers was influenced by Ambrose Bierce and hailed by H.

P.

Lovecraft.

He inspired such authors as Clark Ashton Smith, A.

Merritt and Sax Rohmer.

His works have been anthologized over the years in horror collections and his stories praised by such editors as Lin Carter, Hugh Lamb, Sam Moskowitz and Stephen Jones.

Chambers didn’t write about vampires or haunted mansions.

He was more directly inspired by the Decadents, and wrote about poisonings of the soul, taintings of the spirit, generating what Lovecraft referred to as “cosmic fear.”It all started with The King in Yellow, a collection of vaguely connected stories tied together by a forbidden book, the reading of which induces madness in its readers.

Written in 1895 while the author was a young artist in Paris, these stories exude a Gothic sense, steeped in fetid darkness.The Mystery of Choice from 1897 collects further tales of mystery and unease, also loosely connected by its characters and mood.