The King in Yellow

Have you seen The Yellow Sign? 


Recently referenced at length in the hit HBO series True Detective, The King In Yellow by Robert William Chambers has long been a cult favorite. The Carcosa Myth is an underground mythos 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 -- 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. 


The King in Yellow is a fin de siècle classic and has been described by critics such as E. F. Bleiler as a highly influential work in the field of the supernatural.