Chambers (Robert W.) The King in Yellow

Chicago & New York, F. Tennyson Neely, 1895.

First edition, first printing, first issue. Small 8vo. 1p. advertisement for Chamber’s In the Quarter at end. Original pale green buckram cloth stamped in dark brown with the lizard image for Neely’s Prismatic Library to upper cover, t.e.g., others uncut.

A collection of ten short stories that would later be elaborated on, and referenced in, the works of H.P. Lovecraft. During his lifetime, Chambers was best known for his historical novels set during various wars, but this work would go on to become one of the defining works of weird & supernatural fiction. E.F. Bleiler saw The King in Yellow as the bridge between Edgar Allan Poe and the more modern horror genre, calling it a “small volume that is one of the basic documents in the history of fantastic fiction.”

“The eponymous King in Yellow is the title character of a printed verse play, a book which functions as a mise en abîme or Basilisk that drives its readers to despair, madness and even suicide. The play is set in the lost land of Carcosa, whose vistas are maddeningly unerasable from readers’ minds.” (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction).

This is the first issue, with a lizard design on the front cover, issued without a frontispiece, and with a blank page on the verso of the advertisement.