Robert W. Chambers

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Robert W. Chambers (1903)
Painting (1893) by Chambers

Robert William Chambers (born May 26, 1865 in Brooklyn , New York City , † December 16, 1933 in New York) was an American author of fantastic literature.

Life

Chambers was born in New York in 1865 to a wealthy family rich in tradition. His father, William P. Chambers, was a successful lawyer and his mother, Caroline Chambers, née Boughton, a direct descendant of Roger Williams , founder of Providence and the State of Rhode Island . His brother Walter Boughton Chambers , one year his junior, was a famous architect and designed the Broadalbin family home for his grandfather William Chambers, a respected doctor .

Chambers initially studied engineering at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute , but turned to his artistic inclinations after graduation, becoming one of the first students of the New York Art Students League in 1885 , where he befriended Charles Dana Gibson , who would later illustrate several of his books. In 1886 Chambers went to Paris , where he studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian and exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1889 . Upon his return to New York, he became a sought-after illustrator , whose work appeared in the most prestigious magazines such as Life , Truth and Vogue . His illustrations often showed an idealized type of young women, not dissimilar to the type of Gibson girl propagated by his friend Gibson , so that one also spoke of the Chambers girl by analogy .

Cover of the first edition of The King in Yellow with a cover picture drawn by Chambers

In 1894 a first volume of stories was published - initially anonymously - for which his bohemian life as an artist in Paris formed the background. The sensational success of his second book, The King in Yellow , published in 1895 , a collection of dark and fantastic stories, prompted him to give up the visual arts entirely and to devote himself only to writing. However , he could not repeat the success of the King in Yellow . In the first few years in particular, some collections of stories that could be attributed to the fantastic appeared, but Chambers increasingly turned away from this genre and other genres, such as the historical novel or romance novels in the world of the New York upper class . These books were very successful at first. His novel The Fighting Chance (1906), which was already very successful as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post , had an initial circulation of almost 100,000 copies. The follow-up, The Younger Set (1907), was sold 200,000 times and translated into Swedish.

On the other hand, his influence in the field of fantastic and horror literature remained lasting, where HP Lovecraft and his successors took up elements from Chambers' works, such as the "Yellow Sign" and the cult of Hastur , which Chambers himself had partly taken over from Ambrose Bierce . At the end of his essay, History and Chronology of the Necronomicon , Lovecraft paid homage to Chambers: "It is from the rumors about this book [the Necronomicon] that Robert W. Chambers is said to have drawn the inspiration for his early novel The King in Yellow ."

Lovecraft commented on Chambers' importance and his early departure from the fantastic genre in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature :

"One cannot help regretting that he did not further develop a vein in which he could so easily have become a recognized master."

"It is regrettable that he did not pursue the path that could easily have led him to recognized mastery."

Lovecraft's disappointment with the unformed and neglected in Chambers' formulated by ST Joshi in a similar manner , more detailed and harsher in expression:

“A person who apparently found writing as easy as (at a considerably higher level) Telemann or Mozart composing, who was able to translate his own experiences into literature as a painter in France, as a hunter and angler in New York State, as a butterfly collector and amateur scholar , but at the same time spoiled so many of his creations with brash, pseudo-intellectualism and lurid sentimentality, whose ability to describe and ingenuity were so enormous, but which bowed too much to the taste of the mob to be able to implement them logically and effectively left us with some immortal horror and fantasy stories that have to be laboriously filtered out of an overabundance of trash, the extent of which leaves one stunned - Chambers was an intellectual dilettante and wrote whatever came to mind. "

Chambers's importance is seen today in the fact that he bridged the gap from the macabre and fantastic tales of Poe and Ambrose Bierce to Lovecraft and the more modern representatives of supernatural horror and contributed some elements to the Cthulhu myth . Michael Nagula names as Chambers' influenced authors James Blish , Lin Carter , Raymond Chandler , August Derleth , David Drake , Abraham Merritt , Robert Silverberg , Clark Ashton Smith , Karl Edward Wagner , Jack Vance , Lawrence Watt-Evans and especially Marion Zimmer Bradley in their Darkover novels the names Hastur , Hali and Carcosa , derived from the King in Yellow , play a central role.

By the time he died, Chambers wrote about 70 novels , as well as dramas, poetry and some children's books. His fantastic stories have been published and anthologized again and again to this day . Translations did not materialize until the 1970s, and even in the fantastic boom that followed, they were rather sparse. The King in Yellow has been translated into Italian (1975), Dutch (1976) and Spanish (2000). A first German translation was published by Bastei Lübbe in 1982 . A compilation of The King in Yellow and The Mystery of Choice with an afterword by Michael Nagula and a bibliography on Chambers was published by Festa Verlag in 2002 .

While his romantic and historical stories were soon out of print and forgotten, the silent film, always hungry for filmable material, gladly and extensively made use of the extensive inventory of entertainment literature from Chambers' pen: from 1908 to 1931 27 film adaptations are documented, 20 of them in the years alone 1916 to 1920.

Chambers had married the then 16-year-old Elsa Vaughn Moller in 1898 at the age of 32 and, in the same year, had a son Robert Edward Stuart Chambers (1898–1955), who later also worked as a writer. Chambers died in 1933 at the age of 68 after bowel surgery at the Doctors Hospital in Manhattan and was buried at the Broadalbin family home in the Adirondacks .

In 1909 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Works

Novels and short stories
  • In the Quarter (1894)
  • The King in Yellow (1895, short stories)
  • The Red Republic (1895)
  • The Maker of Moons (1896, short stories)
  • A King and A Few Dukes (1896)
  • With the Band (1896)
  • The Mystery of Choice (1897, short stories)
  • Lorraine (1898)
  • Ashes of Empire (1898)
  • The Haunts of Men (1898, short stories)
  • Outsiders (1899)
  • The Cambric Mask (1899)
  • The Conspirators (1899)
  • Cardigan (1901)
  • The Maid-at-Arms (1902)
  • The Maids of Paradise (1903, historical story about the Franco-Prussian War)
  • In Search of the Unknown (1904)
  • A Young Man in a Hurry (1904, short stories)
  • The Reckoning (1905, historical tale about the American Revolution)
  • Iole (1905)
  • The Tracer of Lost Persons (1906)
  • The Fighting Chance (1906)
  • The Tree of Heaven (1907, short stories)
  • The Younger Set (1907, illustrated by GC Wilmshurst)
  • Some Ladies in Haste (1908)
  • The Firing Line (1908)
  • Special Messenger (1909)
  • The Danger Mark (1909, illustrated by AB Wenzell)
  • The Green Mouse (1910)
  • Ailsa Paige (1910)
  • The Common Law (1911)
  • The Adventures of a Modest Man (1911)
  • Blue-Bird Weather (1912, illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson )
  • The Streets of Ascalon (1912)
  • The Japonette (1912)
  • The Gay Rebellion (1913)
  • The Business of Life (1913)
  • Quick Action (1914)
  • The Hidden Children (1914)
  • Anne's Bridge (1914)
  • Between Friends (1914)
  • Who goes there! (1915)
  • Athalie (1915)
  • Police !!! (1915, short stories)
  • The Girl Philippa (1916)
  • The Better Man (1916, short stories)
  • The Dark Star (1917)
  • The Barbarians (1917)
  • The Laughing Girl (1918)
  • The Restless Sex (1918)
  • The Moonlit Way (1919)
  • In Secret (1919)
  • The Crimson Tide (1919)
  • A Story of Primitive Love (1920)
  • The Slayer of Souls (1920)
  • The Little Red Foot (1920)
  • Eris (1922)
  • The Flaming Jewel (1922)
  • The Talkers (1923)
  • The Hi-Jackers (1923)
  • America; or, The Sacrifice (1924)
  • The Mystery Lady (1925)
  • Marie Halkett (1925 UK, 1937 US)
  • The Girl in Golden Rags (1925 UK, 1936 US)
  • The Man They Hanged (1926)
  • The Drums of Aulone (1927)
  • The Gold Chase (1927)
  • The Sun Hawk (1928)
  • The Rogue's Moon (1928)
  • The Happy Parrot (1929)
  • The Painted Minx (1930)
  • The Rake and the Hussy (1930)
  • War Paint and Rouge (1931)
  • Gitana (1931)
  • Whistling Cat (1932)
  • Whatever Love Is (1933)
  • Secret Service Operator 13 (1934, short stories published in Cosmopolitan between 1930 and 1932)
  • The Young Man's Girl (1934, first printed in The Delineator , 1933)
  • Love and the Lieutenant (1935, first printed in The Woman's Home Companion , 1934)
  • Beating Wings (1936, first printed in McCall's , 1927)
  • The Fifth Horseman (1937, first printed in McCall's , 1930)
  • Smoke of Battle (1938, possibly completed by Rupert Hughes)
Children's books
  • Outdoorland (1902, illustrated by Reginald Bathurst Birch)
  • Orchard Land (1903 illustrated by Reginald Bathurst Birch)
  • River-Land (1904, illustrated by Elizabeth S. Green)
  • Forest-Land (1905, illustrated by Emily Benson Knipe)
  • Mountain-Land (1906, illustrated by Frederick Richardson and Walter King Stone)
  • Garden Land (1907, illustrated by Harrison Cady)
Collections and editions of works
  • The king in yellow and other horror stories. Edited and with an introduction by Everett Franklin Bleiler . Dover, New York 1970, ISBN 0-486-22500-3 . Selection from The King in Yellow and other works. Contains:
    • The Yellow Sign
    • The Repairer of Reputations
    • The Demoiselle D'Ys
    • The Mask
    • In the Court of the Dragon
    • The Maker of Moons
    • A pleasant evening
    • The Messenger
    • The Key to Grief
    • The Harbor master
    • In Quest of the Dingue
    • Is the Ux Extinct?
  • Robert M. Price (Ed.): The Hastur Cycle . Chaosium, 1993 (based on stories by Chambers and others).
  • ST Joshi (Ed.): The Yellow Sign and Other Stories: The Complete Weird Tales of Robert W. Chambers. Chaosium, 2004, ISBN 1-56882-170-0 .
  • The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Robert W. Chambers. 4 vols. Leonaur, 2010.
    • Vol. 1: The Slayer of Souls; In the Court of the Dragon; Passeur; The Key to Grief; The man at the next table; A Pleasant Evening; Rue barre; The Immortal; The Silent Land; The Carpet of Belshazzar; The Sign of Venus; The Case of Mr. Helmer; The Story of Major Weir; One over; The bridal pair; Un Peu D'amour
    • Vol. 2: In Search of the Unknown; The green mouse; Collector of the port; The Purple Emperor; Pompe Funèbre; The Messenger; The Repairer of Reputations; The Yellow Sign
    • Vol. 3: The Maker of Moons; The Tracer of Lost Persons; The Street of Our Lady of the Fields; The Street of the First Shell; The Street of the Four Winds; The swastika; The Whisper; The white shadow; Out of the Depths; The Golden Pool; The Eggs of the Silver Moon; The third eye; The Ladies of the Lake; The Prophets' Paradise
    • Vol. 4: The Hidden Children; The mask; The Demoiselle D'ys.
  • The king in yellow. Translated by Andreas Diesel. With an afterword by Michael Nagula and a bibliography. Festa, 2002, ISBN 3-935822-39-1 . Contains:
    • The restorer of the reputation (The Repairer of Reputations, 1895)
    • The Mask (The Mask, 1895)
    • At the court of the Dragon (In the Court of the Dragon, 1895)
    • The Yellow Sign (1895)
    • The maid d'Ys (The Demoiselle d'Ys, 1895)
    • The paradise of the Prophet (The Prophets' Paradise, 1895)
    • The road of the Four Winds (The Street of the Four Winds, 1895)
    • The mystery of preferences (The Mystery of Choice, 1897)
    • The Purple Emperor (The Purple Emperor, 1897)
    • Pompe Funèbre - Funeral Celebration (Pompe Funèbre, 1897)
    • The Messenger (The Messenger, 1897)
    • The White Shadow (1897)
    • Passeur - Ferryman (Passeur, 1897)
    • The path of sorrow (The Key to Grief, 1897)

literature

Web links

Commons : Robert W. Chambers  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikisource: Robert William Chambers  - sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Nagula: Robert W. Chambers: Fantast between poetry and decadence. In: The King in Yellow. Festa, 2002.
  2. ↑ HP Lovecraft , History and Chronology of the Necronomicons . In: ders. Et al .: Azathoth  : Mixed writings. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1989, p. 299.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Nagula: Robert W. Chambers: Fantast between poetry and decadence. In: The King in Yellow. Festa, 2002.
  4. ↑ His widow later arranged for her to be transferred to the local cemetery.
  5. ^ Members: Robert W. Chambers. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 21, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Jonathan Nield: A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales , GP Putnam's Sons, o.O. 1925, p. 114.
  7. ↑ Jonathan Nield: A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales , GP Putnam's Sons, o.O. 1925, p. 359.
personal data
SURNAME Chambers, Robert W.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chambers, Robert William; Chambers, RW
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author of fantastic literature
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York City
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1933
Place of death New York City