Robert W. Chambers

He trained as a painter in Paris, hung work in the Salon, and came home to sell drawings to Vogue. Then he wrote instead. Seventy-odd books after that: a student novel of the Quarter, weird tales he soon abandoned, historical romances of the Revolution and the Civil War, Paris on fire, and society novels that paid for the Adirondack house. Critics called him the shopgirl Scheherazade. The public bought him by the crate. The King in Yellow is the book that outlived the bestsellers. Chambers had already moved on. The yellow stain did not.