Robert W. Chambers (May 26, 1865 to December 16, 1933)

American novelist and short-story writer, was born in Brooklyn, NY the son of William Chambers and Caroline (Broughton) Chambers. He studied painting at the Art Student League in New York, where Charles Dana Gibson was a member of his class, and in 1886 proceeded to Paris for further training at the �cole des Beaux Arts and the Acad�mie Julien. The Salon accepted his paintings when Chambers was only twenty-four. Returning to New York in 1893, he did illustrating for Life, Truth, and Vogue. His first book, In the Quarter, a melodramatic story of the student life he had known in Paris, might yield a libretto for another La Boh�me. The King in Yellow, a collection of short stories, attained a kind of sinister celebrity; the reissue in 1938 showed it somewhat dated although one tale, �The Demoiselle D�Ys,� has a haunting, poetic eeriness. The Maker of Moons was an imaginative horror story. Chambers soon dropped this style to write four romances centering around the Franco-Prussian War; Lorraine, Ashes of Empire (in which a group of dashing young Americans assist the Empress Eug�nie to escape, hat and all, from Paris), The Red Republic, and The Maids of Paradise. These exhibited his ability to handle crowds, invent exciting incident, and exercise his painter�s dexterity in painting vivid landscapes.DOWN

Continuing his historical-novel phase, Chambers wrote a series about Revolutionary New York, Sir William Johnson, Walter Butler, and Indian conspiracies, which still exercise their spell over romantic youth. These were Cardigan, The Maid at Arms, The Hidden Children, and The Little Red Foot. Next came the society problem-novels, concerned largely with love and the obstacles to marriage. The fighting Chance and The Danger Mark considered the dangers of alcoholic tastes in, respectively, a man and girl, while The Younger Set and The Firing Line took up the question of divorce. In spite of the vogue of the Chambers heroine at the time, she was markedly less convincing than his men. His dramatic instinct found vent in The Witch of Ellangowan, a vehicle for Ada Rehan, and Iole, a musical comedy based on a novel which was supposed to lampoon Elbert Hubbard of Roycrofters. The real model was Aristide Bruant, A Parisian diseur (for Bruant see Toulouse-Lautrec, by Gerstle Mack). Mr. Keen, of The Tracer of Lost Persons, is a sentimental detective. DOWN

In his first twenty years as a popular writer Chambers produced forty-five volumes, �veering in accordance with the breeze of popular demand.� The period of 1915-1919 had its quota of war novels. In 1924 he returned to historical fiction, with the same easy fluency but small critical acclaim, although magazines continued to pay high prices for his serials. Chambers was able to gratify his tastes for Chinese and Japanese antiques, old china and furniture, armor, and the restoration of his early nineteenth-century home in the Adirondack foothills, called Broadalbin. At a New York office, whose address was unknown even to his family, he wrote from ten to six. Fishing and hunting were his relaxations. The novelist was a well set-up man, with square shoulders and chin and a gray mustache. His manner was cordial and genial. The National Institute of Arts and Letters numbered Chambers among its members. On July 12, 1898, he married Elsa Vaughn Moller. A son, Robert Husted Chambers, attained some success as a writer.

from: 20th. Century Writers

The King In Yellow