The book is named for the fictional play with the same title which recurs as a motif through some of the stories. “The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.” Even seeing of the first page of the second act is enough to draw the reader in: “If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it ” (“ The Repairer of Reputations”).The King in Yellow is a book of short stories by the American writer Robert W. The stories describe Act I as quite ordinary, but reading Act II drives the reader mad with the 'irresistible' revealed truths. The short story 'The Mask' is introduced by an excerpt from Act I, Scene 2d:Īll of the excerpts come from Act I. For example, 'Cassilda's Song' comes from Act I, Scene 2 of the play: Chambers' story collection excerpts sections from the play to introduce the book as a whole, or individual stories. The fictional play The King in Yellow has two acts, and at least three characters: Cassilda, Camilla, and the King in Yellow.

Some are linked to the preceding stories by their Parisian setting and artistic protagonists. The other stories in the book do not follow the macabre theme of the first four, and most are written in the romantic fiction style common to Chambers' later work. The next three are set in Paris at the same time. The first story ' The Repairer of Reputations', is set in an imagined future 1920s America, whose history, being at odds with the knowledge of the reader, adds to the effect of its unreliable narrator. These stories are macabre in tone, centering on characters that are often artists or decadents. For instance, the famous short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper', involving a bedridden woman's descent into madness, was published shortly before Chambers' book. It has also been suggested that the color yellow represents quarantine - an allusion to decay, disease, and specifically mental illness.

The color yellow signifies the decadent and aesthetic attitudes that were fashionable at the turn of the 19th century, typified by such publications as The Yellow Book, a literary journal associated with Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. The first four stories are loosely connected by three main devices:

The king in yellow stories