Audiobook · read by volunteers
King in Yellow (part 1)
Robert W. Chambers (1865–1933)
Read by Peter Yearsley · 9 chapters · 4 h 38
About the book
There is a play called The King in Yellow, and those who read it are never quite the same. Robert W. Chambers built his collection of strange tales around this rumour, and in the stories you will hear, the shadow of the book creeps in at the edges: a city of the near future, a man who repairs reputations, a mask, a sign, a feeling that reality has a thin skin. The tone is eerie, elegant and dreamlike, the sort of horror that suggests more than it says. Chambers was an artist before he was a writer, and his scenes have the clarity of paintings. This is the first half of the collection, in nine chapters and just under five hours, read by a single LibriVox volunteer. Strange, elegant and quietly disturbing.
Introduction
Robert William Chambers, who lived from 1865 to 1933, studied art in Paris in the late 1880s and early 1890s, and his work was shown at the Salon. After returning to America, he turned to writing, and he became popular as the author of many romantic novels. Today, however, he is best remembered for one early book: The King in Yellow, published in 1895.
That book is a collection of short stories, and only its first half is presented in this recording. The earlier stories share an unusual background: a play, also called The King in Yellow, that is said to corrupt anyone who reads it and to open the mind to terrible, uncanny knowledge. The play is never fully shown. It hovers around the edges of the tales, which gives them a feeling of dread and of something half-glimpsed. The collection opens with The Repairer of Reputations, set in a future version of New York, and the stories that follow include The Mask, The Court of the Dragon and The Yellow Sign. The second half of the collection, which is not included here, consists mostly of love stories coloured by the author's years as an art student in France.
Chambers's weird tales had a lasting influence on later writers of horror and fantasy. H. P. Lovecraft admired them, and the idea of a cursed book was taken up by many others. The prose is polished and the atmosphere is intense, and the stories reward a slow, attentive listen.
This recording has nine chapters and runs for about four and a half hours. It is a good choice for dark evenings and for readers of classic supernatural fiction.
Public domain
Robert W. Chambers died in 1933: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text