Miskatonic Arcihves

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An encyclopedia of strange fiction, its creators, places and mythos. Follow the sources; draw your own conclusions.

Tagged: Romance

Authors

Robert W. Chambers

Robert William Chambers (1865–1933) was an American artist and writer whose The King in Yellow became an important source for later weird fiction. His early training and work in visual art have a close counterpart in stories about painters, sculptors, models and the unstable relation between an image and a life. His wider career also included extensive romantic and historical fiction.

7 min read · 1,323 words

Literature

The Demoiselle d’Ys

The Demoiselle d’Ys is a romantic supernatural tale in which an American traveler lost on the Breton moors encounters a young woman living in an apparently vanished historical world. Its conclusion joins a sudden return to ruins with evidence of a love that has already become part of the past. The story follows the four principal forbidden-play tales in The King in Yellow.

5 min read · 960 words

Literature

The King in Yellow

The King in Yellow is Robert W. Chambers’s 1895 collection of supernatural, romantic and artistic tales, together with a sequence of short prose pieces. Its first four stories are connected by an invented play whose beauty and revelations damage its readers. The book’s wider contents extend beyond that premise, making edition history and the distinction between the real collection and the fictional drama essential.

7 min read · 1,364 words