Robert W. Chambers Books

Nothing spectacular to write home about. When I bought this book, I was hoping for the old radio dramas that I used to listen to when I was a kid on Sunday nights. I will say that there were some very good stories. But a few left you rather wanting.

R. W. Chambers has achieved a curiously high standing among horror enthusiasts based upon two or three of his early books. The vast majority of his works are trashy romance novels utterly devoid of literary merit. He had very little artistic integrity: he once claimed that being able to write a good book was of less importance to him than rearranging the furniture of his cabin. Yet despite of this he has carried down through the ages a reputation of being a pioneering author of supernatural fiction. How did this happen? It may be simply because his work, although unexceptional in itself, has spawned a host of very well known and popular imitators, among them the legendary pulp writer H. P. Lovecraft. The King in Yellow may be viewed as the prototype upon which was modeled the Cthulhu mythos as we know it.
Unfortunately the quality of the stories in this book are very mixed. The tales here compiled are sadly flawed due to the fact that Chambers was unashamedly pandering to his intended audience: the uneducated, who in the 1800 hundreds formed a depressingly large percentage of the population. As a result his books sold phenomenally, becoming some of the highest selling volumes of the time. But the factor which so greatly contributed to his popularity at the time shows to his disadvantage here. The book is filled with cliches of the time. In approximately half of the stories a maudlin and unnecessary love story is worked in. Others are marred by his sickly and pitiful attempts at humor. As a whole the volume shows little literary merit.
There is, however, one redeeming feature. Although poorly realized, many of the tales here contain the first mentioning of concepts later used to greater advantage in the tales of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Enthusiasts of their works may find this book worth purchasing purely due to the influence it had upon these authors. To the general reader, however, The King in Yellow and Other Stories contains little of interest.

HP Lovecraft was heavily inspired by Chambers' wierd tales from _The King in Yellow_. (He stole the name and vague concept of Hastur from it.) The frustrating thing about RW Chambers is that he COULD write very well, but for some reason he usually didn't. At his best he could weave an atmosphere of terrifying hallucinatory brilliance. At his worst he was hokey, sentimental, sappy, and tiresome. Half of his original _The King in Yellow_ consists of dopey romance stories that will infuriate the wierd fiction fan. Not so here. This Dover collection has only the best tales from _The King in Yellow_, as well as a number of other chilling morsels picked from Chambers' large body of later (mostly forgettable) work.
You should get hold of this collection just for "The Repairer of Reputations," which ranks as a superior masterpiece of surreal paranoid delirium. It's one of the top 5 wierd stories of all time, and actually BETTER than anything by Lovecraft.

An excellent collection by a lesser-known writer of short
horror fiction, this volume contains one of my all-time favorite short stories in any genre, "The Harbor-Master."
Buy and read this book!

Robert Chamber's title story became one of the most important works in American supernatural fiction since those of Poe, representing one of the first attempts to establish the horror of the names: this reprints all the supernatural stories from THE KING IN YELLOW, presenting some of Chambers' best from a range of sources. A highly recommended pick for fans of horror and the supernatural.

It is nice that someone decided to republish this book (when I was a kid it was almost impossible to find). Anyway, the edition is nice, but it would be cool if someone did an academic edition of the book. I am surprised no one has thought of this yet.

Each time a reader reads this book, he or she is actually reading the same book spoken of in the text, the reading of which will drive the reader mad - case in point, the only passages that we are allowed to glimpse from the legendary "King In Yellow" within the stories are the same passages that appear in the actual copy one is reading at the time. For all of you who have seen the film "The Ring", think of it as a videotaped "King In Yellow" - beware the Yellow Sign, lest your reputation become beyond repair!

well, chambers stories have a LOT of potential. he has quite an imagination. very original guy. and very different. he could have been truly weird. but he doesn't know when to stop. he can suddenly stretch the story too far in one direction, amazingly enogh: away from the horror. also he likes to include romance even when it doesn't fit. he has an anarchic style that destroys the stories.

Has anyone noticed the plagiarism regarding the Japanese movie [now remade in the United States] called "The Ring" and "The King In Yellow"? --In the 1895 novel, whoever read this banned play went mad . . . and in "The Ring" whoever came upon a video turned up dead. A "video cassette" is just the 20th Century's version of a play, isn't it? --And "death" replaces "madness," but it's the same idea--plagiarized.

many fans of the work of robert w. chambers insist that "the king in yellow" is an actual book, the existence of which can only be taken on faith. while i am naturally skeptical about this, as i am about the "necronomicon", i find the soul crushing ambiance of cosmic doom and impending insanity far superior to many of the famed tales of lovecraft. "the repairer of reputations" is to my mind ranked with m.r. james "casting of the runes" and "the shadow over innsmouth". whether he was writing about a real book or not, chambers obviously had something weighing on his mind. creepy as hell.

Doughty's book covers exactly what it says. It provides a good overview of American military history beginning basically with the colonists' battles with Native Americans. This book really shines in its discussion of the technology behind warfare and how it affected key battles. For example, its sections on the technology of World War I (machine gun, plane and tank) are carried through when discussing World War II. I felt the authors did a good job of trying to create a logical flow of progression. Though I'm not sure if killing more people faster is "progress" but I digress.

There are also smaller sections on important military commanders. The authors also have no problem calling a spade a spade and telling the reader who did a bad job. And based on the Civil War section lots of people did lots of bad jobs.

There are, obviously, more in-depth studies of all the military actions and technology discussed in the book. But the importance of the book is to tie all of these facets together and create a larger view of American military history. Overall, the book did a good job creating a sense of evolution of western warfare.

When Easter Eggs that ring when touched fall from the sky, it's both a new kind of First Contact and a love story. The question is--what kind of love?

An original science fiction novel from the author of SPARROWHAWK.

If American author Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) is remembered at all today, it is for his macabre works, including his 1895 book, The King in Yellow. However, around the turn of the twentieth century, Mr. Chambers switched over to writing in the much more lucrative genre of romantic, historical fiction.

The Maid-at-arms is the story of two young people during the American Revolution - George Ormond and Dorothy Varick. Thrown together by family responsibilities, their love can never be. And yet, with the war intruding upon their comfortable New York world, everything is thrown into chaos, and anything is possible...

Overall, I found this to be a pretty good, if lightweight read. The story is interesting, and I loved the author's use of the upper-class New York seigniory class with its slavery and pretensions as a backdrop to the story. So, if you like good historical fiction, then I highly recommend this book to you. It's quite an interesting read.

If American author Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) is remembered at all today, it is for his macabre works, including his 1895 book, The King in Yellow. However, around the turn of the twentieth century, Mr. Chambers switched over to writing in the much more lucrative genre of romantic, historical fiction.

The Maid-at-arms is the story of two young people during the American Revolution - George Ormond and Dorothy Varick. Thrown together by family responsibilities, their love can never be. And yet, with the war intruding upon their comfortable New York world, everything is thrown into chaos, and anything is possible...

Overall, I found this to be a pretty good, if lightweight read. The story is interesting, and I loved the author's use of the upper-class New York seigniory class with its slavery and pretensions as a backdrop to the story. So, if you like good historical fiction, then I highly recommend this book to you. It's quite an interesting read.

I eagerly bought this book based on the King in Yellow tales by Chambers I had read years before. Yipes! Chambers wrote a ton of really dreadful stuff--silly, immature nonsense. Despite editor Joshi's disclaimers in the introduction that Chambers wasted a lot of his talent pandering to popularity, I don't think his comments adequately criticized the awfulness of much of this massive volume. Chambers undoubtedly could create real chills, but how the author of the King in Yellow short stories could descend into such pap is beyond me--what a disappointment and what a bore. Unless one is a total fanatic and has to have everything Chambers wrote that has a "fantastic" element, save your money and buy a small volume about the Yellow King. The only thing "fantastic" about most of these stories is how fantastically dreadful they are.

The first half of the book (The Yellow Sign sub-book) was fantastic. It was imaginative and scary. My favorite story was THE REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS.
After The Yellow Sign, though. The book gets more and more tedious. Not to say that all the stories are bad, but some are, and most are very hard to read- and it's a big book.
So, I recommend this to any Cthulhu Mythos fan as a literary "source" for Lovecraft and great info on The King in Yellow (which may have inspired the idea for The Necronomicon).

very inventive. very original. and ha sure knows how to keep the reader from knowing what's going on. but he is too anarchicc in style, suddenly taking a long path AWAY from the horror. for example, he suddenly creates a love story in the middle of building a horror story with great promise. he can make a story become an unclear blur. he doesn't obey any rules, and it does not suit the stories.

Yellow Sign And Other Stories is a recommended pick for fans of Lovecraft, providing a collection of weird tales in the Lovecraft tradition of subtle horror and lurking underlying monsters. At the heart of it all is a 'Yellow Sign' and a horrible book which brings terror to those who dare to open it and mysterious beings who support an ancient horror. The stories are linked in tone but stand alone as excellent tales.

Editor S.T. Joshi warns all the readers that Chambers can reach sometimes the nadir of literature and that he tried to not include the worst thing in this collection.
Nevertheless the disappointment is high as soon as you end the book and realize that only the first 88 pages are worth reading (that is the King in Yellow)on a total of 643.
In the remaining 555 pages ideas are scarce, character are monodimensional and there's a disturbing sense of racism.
I'll advise Cthulhu and Weird tales fan to get a book with only the Repairman of Reputation (which is indeed a marvelous story) unless they are truly collectors.