The King in Yellow

The King In Yellow by Robert William Chambers is a key work in the Carcosa Mythos, a fictional universe which writers have been contributing to for more than 120 years; an interlocking set of stories, poems, and even a play about a fictional city called Carcosa, that can never quite be seen directly. Carcosa shows up first in a story by the American writer Ambrose Bierce, An Inhabitant of Carcosa, and is the central theme of the ten tales in The King in Yellow.

The first four stories in The King in Yellow – The Repairer of Reputations, The Mask, In the Court of the Dragon and The Yellow Sign – mention The King in Yellow, a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those who read it.