The first four stories are loosely connected by three main devices: • A play in book form titled
The King in Yellow • A mysterious and malevolent supernatural and
gothic entity known as the King in Yellow • An eerie symbol called the Yellow Sign These stories are macabre in tone, centering, in keeping with the other tales, on characters who are often artists or
decadents, inhabitants of the
demi-monde. The first and fourth stories, "The Repairer of Reputations" and "The Yellow Sign", are set in America, whereas the second and third stories, "The Mask" and "In the Court of the Dragon", are set in
Paris. These stories are haunted by the theme: "Have you found the Yellow Sign?" The macabre character gradually fades away during the remaining stories, and the last three are written in the romantic fiction style common to Chambers's later work. They are all linked to the preceding stories by their Parisian setting and their artistic protagonists. The stories in the book are: • "
The Repairer of Reputations" – a story of egotism and paranoia which carries the imagery of the book's title. • "
The Mask" – a dream story of art, love, and uncanny science. • "In the Court of the Dragon" – a man is pursued by a sinister church organist who is after his soul. • "The Yellow Sign" – an artist is troubled by a sinister churchyard watchman who resembles a coffin worm. • "The Demoiselle d'Ys" – a time travel love story. • "The Prophets' Paradise" – a sequence of eerie prose poems that develop the style and theme of a quotation from the fictional play
The King in Yellow that introduces "The Mask". • "The Street of the Four Winds" – an atmospheric tale of an artist in Paris who is drawn to a neighbor's room by a cat; the story ends with a tragic touch. • "The Street of the First Shell" – a war story set during the
Siege of Paris (1870–71). • "The Street of Our Lady of the Fields" – romantic American bohemians in Paris. • "Rue Barrée" – romantic American bohemians in Paris, with a discordant ending that playfully reflects some of the tone of the first story. ==Inspirations for
The King in Yellow==