The King in Yellow

The King in Yellow is a book of short stories named after a play with the same title which recurs as a motif through some of the stories. The book features highly esteemed weird stories and supernatural tales. Table of Contents: 'The Repairer of Reputations' - A weird story of egotism and paranoia which carries the imagery of the book's title. 'The Mask' - A dream story of art, love, and uncanny science. 'In the Court of the Dragon' - A man is pursued by a sinister church organist who is after his soul. 'The Yellow Sign' - An artist is troubled by a sinister churchyard watchman who resembles a coffin worm. 'The Demoiselle d'Ys' - A ghost story. 'The Prophets' Paradise' - A sequence of eerie prose poems that develop the style and theme of a quote from the fictional play The King in Yellow which introduces 'The Mask'. 'The Street of the Four Winds' - An atmospheric tale of an artist in Paris who is drawn to a neighbor's room by a cat; the story ends with a macabre touch. 'The Street of the First Shell' - A war story set in the Paris Siege of 1870. 'The Street of Our Lady of the Fields' - Romantic American bohemians in Paris. 'Rue Barrée' - Romantic American bohemians in Paris, with a discordant ending that playfully reflects some of the tone of the first story.

Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for The King in Yellow, a collection of his Art Nouveau short stories. This included several famous weird short stories which are connected by the theme of a fictitious drama of the same title, which drives those who read it insane.