Robert W. Chambers

Robert William Chambers
Born (1865-05-26)May 26, 1865
Brooklyn, New York, US
Died December 16, 1933(1933-12-16) (aged 68)
New York City
Occupation Novel and short story author
Genre Art Nouveau, Decadent literature, Fantasy, Historical fiction, Horror, Romance, Science fiction, Supernatural
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Robert William Chambers (May 26, 1865 – December 16, 1933) was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories entitled The King in Yellow, published in 1895.

Biography

He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to William P. Chambers (1827–1911), a corporate and bankruptcy lawyer, and Caroline Smith Boughton (1842-1913). His parents met when Caroline was twelve years old and William P. was interning with her father, Joseph Boughton, a prominent corporate lawyer. Eventually the two formed the law firm of Chambers and Boughton which continued to prosper even after Joseph's death in 1861. Robert's great-grandfather, William Chambers (birth unknown), a lieutenant in the British Royal Navy, was married to Amelia Saunders,(1765-1822), the great grand daughter of Tobias Saunders, of Westerly, Rhode Island. The couple moved from Westerly, to Greenfield, Massachusetts and then to Galway, New York, where their son, also William Chambers, (1798-1874) was born. The second William graduated from Union College at the age of 18, and then went to a college in Boston, where he studied to be a doctor. Upon graduating, he and his wife, Eliza P. Allen (1793-1880), a direct descendant of Roger Williams,[1] the founder of Providence, Rhode Island were among the first settlers of Broadalbin, New York. His brother was architect Walter Boughton Chambers.

Robert was first educated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and then entered the Art Students' League at around the age of twenty, where the artist Charles Dana Gibson was his fellow student. Chambers studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, and at Académie Julian, in Paris from 1886 to 1893, and his work was displayed at the Salon as early as 1889. On his return to New York, he succeeded in selling his illustrations to Life, Truth, and Vogue magazines. Then, for reasons unclear, he devoted his time to writing, producing his first novel, In the Quarter (written in 1887 in Munich). His most famous, and perhaps most meritorious, effort is The King in Yellow, a collection of Art Nouveau short stories published in 1895. This included several famous weird short stories which are connected by the theme of a fictitious drama of the same title, which drives those who read it insane.[2] E. F. Bleiler described The King in Yellow as one of the most important works of American supernatural fiction.[3] It was also strongly admired by H. P. Lovecraft and his circle.

Chambers returned to the weird genre in his later short story collections The Maker of Moons, The Mystery of Choice and The Tree of Heaven, but none earned him as much success as The King in Yellow. Some of Chambers's work contains elements of science fiction, such as In Search of the Unknown and Police!!!, about a zoologist who encounters monsters.[4]

Chambers later turned to writing romantic fiction to earn a living. According to some estimates, Chambers had one of the most successful literary careers of his period, his later novels selling well and a handful achieving best-seller status. Many of his works were also serialized in magazines.

His novel The Man They Hanged was about Captain Kidd, and argued that Kidd was not a pirate, and had been made a scapegoat by the British government.[1]

During World War I he wrote war adventure novels and war stories, some of which showed a strong return to his old weird style, such as "Marooned" in Barbarians (1917). After 1924 he devoted himself solely to writing historical fiction.

Chambers for several years made Broadalbin, New York, his summer home. Some of his novels touch upon colonial life in Broadalbin and Johnstown.

On July 12, 1898, he married Elsa Vaughn Moller (1882–1939). They had a son, Robert Edward Stuart Chambers (who sometimes used the name Robert Husted Chambers).

Robert W. Chambers died on December 16, 1933, after having undergone intestinal surgery three days earlier.[1]

Criticism and legacy

H. P. Lovecraft said of Chambers in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith:

Chambers is like Rupert Hughes and a few other fallen Titans – equipped with the right brains and education but wholly out of the habit of using them."[5]

Despite Chambers' effective later abandonment of the weird supernatural tale, these early works are all that remained in print through most of the twentieth century, thanks to Lovecraft's inclusion of them in the critical study Supernatural Horror in Literature.

Frederic Taber Cooper commented:

So much of Mr Chambers's work exasperates, because we feel that he might so easily have made it better."[6]

Critical studies of Chambers's horror and fantasy work include Lee Weinstein's essay in Supernatural Fiction Writers,[7] Brian Stableford's essay in the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers[8] and a chapter in S. T. Joshi's book The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004).

Chambers' novel The Tracer of Lost Persons was adapted into a long-running (1937–54) old-time radio crime drama, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, by legendary soap opera producers Frank and Anne Hummert.[9]

Chambers' The King in Yellow has inspired many modern authors, including Karl Edward Wagner, Joseph S. Pulver, Lin Carter, James Blish, Nic Pizzolato, Michael Cisco, Ann K. Schwader, Robert M. Price, Galad Elflandsson and Charles Stross.

Cover of the first edition of In Search of the Unknown.

Bibliography

Novels and story collections

A reprint of Chambers's 1897 novelette "The Messenger" was cover-featured on the April 1948 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries.
Chambers's 1920 novel The Slayer of Souls was reprinted as the cover story on the May 1951 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

Works published posthumously

Children's books

Collections containing reprinted work by Robert W. Chambers

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 "Robert Chambers, Novelist, Is Dead". New York Times. 17 December 1933. p. 36.
  2. ↑ Brian Stableford, "The King in Yellow" in Frank N. Magill, ed. Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature, Vol 2. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, Inc., 1983. ISBN 0893564508 (pp. 844–847).
  3. ↑ Quoted in "Chambers, Robert W(illiam)" by T. E. D. Klein, in Jack Sullivan. The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, Penguin/Viking, New York. 1986 ISBN 0670809020 (p. 74-6).
  4. ↑ Bleiler, Everett Franklin and Bleiler, Richard. Science-Fiction: The Early Years. Kent State University Press, 1990. ISBN 0873384164. p. 129-132.
  5. ↑ Lovecraft, Selected Letters vol. 2, ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (Arkham House, 1968), p. 148.
  6. ↑ Cooper, Some American Story Tellers (Henry Holt, 1911), p.81. Quoted in Joshi, The Evolution of the Weird Tale, p.18.
  7. ↑ Lee Weinstein, "Robert W. Chambers in, E. F. Bleiler, ed. Supernatural Fiction Writers. New York: Scribner's, 1985. (pp.739-746). ISBN 0-684-17808-7
  8. ↑ Brian Stableford, "Chambers, Robert W(illiam)" in David Pringle, ed., St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers (London: St. James Press, 1998) ISBN 1558622063 (pp. 130-2).
  9. ↑ Cox, Jim (May 2004). Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: A Complete History and Episode Log of Radio's Most Durable Detective. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-1738-2.

References

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