Robert W. Chambers Book Index

Title	Date Pub	Dedication	Review	Cover	About Cover
In the quarter	1894	To my friend Reginald Bathurst Birch	Paris Latin Quarter artist in the 1880's this is RWC's first work and as such seems to be very close to the life of RWC as an art student. The only difference between RWC and Rex Gethryn is the replacement of parents with a distant aunt. This is the wish of many a young man on his own for the first time. His lover's sister plots to destroy his happy life. This is a true account of a first love. Here is the source of all the young lovers over coming the odds to live happily ever after that haunt and in some cases mare all his books. This book falls into 3 parts. The first part, to my thinking, is straight autobiography. The pleasure turned to pain of the remembered first love rings true to the core. In the last 2/3 of the book he moves away from his character and looks at him from a distance through the eyes of others. It was too painful to do other wise. The second part, the hunting trip in Bavaria with old friends, also seems to have a core of truth to it. But here the truth is made to serve the story. The third and last part of the book seems to be all storytelling. The finding of his first love and lover with the promise of marriage is wish fulfillment. The killing of the main character, so easily identified as the young Robert W. Chambers the painter, is also a form of wish fulfillment. Many authors have killed themselves in their books when dealing with subject too painful to live with. There is a clue here to why Chambers gave up painting. He tells of gaining skill but loosing the joy and innocence of painting. This may also explain why he liked writing and also why he never took any training in writing.	image	Second Edition or Later (96)
The King in Yellow	1895	My Brother	The King in Yellow is a group of thinly connected short stories all dealing with the effect of a two act play titled "The King in Yellow". The play will show up in the lives and libraries of the victims as if it has a dark soul and will of its own. The King in Yellow is currently the best known work by RWC and rightly so. Chambers was never able to return to the true madness of this his second work. The haunting wonder of this work has only been seen before or since in Poe and Lovecraft. - (Xerox of true first edition and buccaneer reprint)	1st 2nd 3rd 4th	True First Editions, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th binding
The red republic: a romance of the commune	1895		In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, insurrection in the streets of Paris leads to the establishment of "The Commune" run by students, intellectuals, and street thugs, a revolutionary government that rules and runs Paris for bloody months as the traditional government looks on and does nothing. The hero of the story is an American painter who must defend the sister of a dead friend from criminals in the ruling revolutionary party who are after her family's diamonds. The first part of the book is fast paced and runs away with the reader. It is as action packed as "The Flaming Jewel", one of Chambers' best books. The story bogs down a little in the middle when they hold up in the artists studio and the artist paints her picture and falls in love with her. The love story is not as sickly-sweet as Chambers later tales of love. The story picks up again and takes some strange twists even a detour through the eyes of the young lady's pet cat who tells the story for a time much like the hound in "Sometimes a Great Notion". This book is very well researched. Chambers states that he saw the records of the Commune and interviewed members of both sides of the conflict. This means that the research for this book was completed before he left Paris in 1893. It also explains The Street of the First Shell and why it is in TKIY. This also supports my theory that his decision to write was not the whim that it was often thought to be; since RWC most likely wrote the core of TKIY, did all the research for The Red Republic, and wrote most or all of In the Quarter before leaving Paris. It makes me wonder just when Chambers started writing? All in all a great adventure story, reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs in its pacing and storytelling technique.	15th impress
With the band	1896
The mystery of choice	1897		The highlights of the book are the three Dick Darrel stories; The Purple Emperor; Pompe Funèbre; and The Messenger. Of the three, The Messenger is the best and also the only supernatural story. Out of the remaining tails; The White Shadow & The Key to Grief - are okay but predicable; Passeur - is haunting; and A Matter of Interest - is laughable in light of modern paleontology. The book ends with a four page poem called Eavoi. I am not much for supernatural love poems of the last century. This is not the haunting madness of "The King of Yellow" but The Messenger, The Purple Emperor, and Passeur make it worth the money.	image
Lorraine	1897		Franco-Prussian War
A king and a few dukes	1897
The witch of ellangowan	1897		based on Sir Walter Scott's "Guy Mannering" and written by Chambers as a vehicle for Ada Kehan, was produced in 1897;
D. osborne, writer of romance	1898
The haunts of men	1898			plain cover	Movie
Ashes of empire	1898		Franco-Prussian War	image
The cambric mask a romance	1899		Ku Klux Klan & romance but with greed not race, The railroad is expanding and everybody wants the land.	image	First English Edition 1900
Outsiders; an outline	1899		An attack on what passes as American culture. The hero, Oliver Lock, is a writer returning to the land of his birth with two novels in tow "The Winged Boy" and "The Self-Satisfied". (does much to back up my theory that RWC first 2 books were written before returning to NYC) He hates the city and finds it a monster of iron. There is much here to make the case that "The Outsiders" was his first novel on American soil. He rants about the lack of culture and the rusty ribs of the iron thing. The hero has no family. He tries to sell his books but the publishing houses are run by fools and worse than fools. He loose his room and almost starves, and is sick unto death but for the kindness of some members of the unclassed, the outsiders. The first of the book is bitter and unrelenting. It may have been left unfinished for some time because there is a big difference after page 165 when the standard love interest hits in force. It seems to be graphed on to the body of the book. By page 238 she is gone and after a chapter of regret it is like she never was, only to show up again at the end of the book to die. There is something incomplete about the book. The front 2/3s is a work of pain and madness, the end is early Chambers love story with a bit of the writer coming into his own and joining the Author's Club. Not a finished work but deep insights into the mind just after "The King in Yellow".	Plain Blue Cover
The conspirators	1899	To Elsie (poem)		image
Cardigan	1901	My Father and Mother	Revolutionary War in Broadalbin, hero is the ward of Sir William Johnson. He is sent to stop an Indian war planned by Walter Buttler who wants to turn the Indians against the rebels. (Need 2nd copy, my 1st edition is mis-bound and is missing pages 137 - 156)	1st 1930 1930	1st 1930 cover 1930 dust jacket Movie
The maker of moons	1902	To My Father	"The Maker of Moons" is good and strange with gods and yellow peril, "The Silent Land" starts off great and then he throws away the ending by breaking the frame and letting the reader know that it is just a story. A real bummer and I haven't read the rest of the book yet.	image	First Edition cover
Maids of paradise	1902	To E.M.C. (inside a heart)	Franco-Prussian War
The maid-at-arms	1902	Miss Katharine Husted	Revolutionary War in Broadalbin, Sir John Johnson, Walter Bulter, the Virick, Ormond, and Schuyler families, Thayendanegea (Brent) - (part of the Cardigan series)	cover Dust Jacket
Outdoorland	1902
Orchard-land	1903
Fly-Fishing	1904
Trout & grayling in bavaria	1904
Semi-tropical shooting	1904		Hunting in Florida, some remarks that would be racist by today's standards. Talks about sportsmanship and has much to say about those that shoot anything that moves just for the fun of killing.
Shot out	1904
In search of the unknown	1904		In Search of the Unknown, 1904, consists of humorous light fantasies with strong sci-fi elements. The stories feature the narrator, a man who searches for lost species of animals, and we follow him on his journeys to find these animals. The creatures include among others a half-man, half-amphibian called "the harbor-master". The narrator falls in love in most of the stories, unfortunately with women who are always whisked away at the last moment. The episodes in the book were first stitched together in order to seem like a novel, a device used by the original publishers to boost sales of the book	image
A young man in a hurry	1904			image	Movie the shining band
Stag & roebuck	1904
Fished out	1904
Poor sport made better	1904
Point shooting	1904		The author talking/writing about his life as a duck hunter, talks of hunting trips with his brother and how they made decoys that looked real to everyone but black ducks. Some insight into Chambers the man. - did not get all of article
Curiosities of angling	1904
The reckoning	1905	To my friend J. Hamblen Sears Whose Unselvish Friendship and Sound Advice I Acknowledge in this Dedication	Revolutionary War in Broadalbin (part of the Cardigan series) The Reckoning is the last of the Cardigan series. The hero, Carus Renault, is a spy for his Excellency and the rebels. It is not something he likes to do for he would rather take up arms against the crown in open warware. Capt. Walter Butler is again the villain supreme. He finds evidence to hang Ranault and is only thwarted by Elsin Gray, a women Butler lusts after and has married in secret even thou he has not consummated the marrage and he already has another wife. Ranault loves Elsin Gray and she has come to care for him in return. After escaping from New York City, the last stronghold of the British, Ranault must leave her behind to stop the destruction of the Iroquois Longhouse, for he is an adopted Sachem of the Oneida Wolf Clan, the only tribe of the Longhouse to side with the rebels. With one Oneida warrior and Lyn Montour, the half breed wife that Butler has put aside, Renault faces the council at Thendara to stop the punishment of the Oneida Clan. Lyn Montour is the wife of Butler, she is the Cherry Maid and daughter of Catrine Montour the half French Huron witch. She has been abandoned and shamed by Butler who denies that they were ever married. Without proof of the marriage she is a fallen women and her Indian world is closed to her. Renault returns in time to fight one battle as a Captain defending Johnstown. At long last Walter Butler, the Butcher of Cherry Valley, meets his just end. Lyn Montour's honor is restored in morning for the husband who put her aside to marry another and Jack Mount, the bandit hero of the Revolution, takes her to wife. The Hero and Heroine are able to marry at last and the war comes to an end. A good book for any interested in the American Revolution and upstate New York. There is a deep insight into the way of life of the Colonial rich that sided with the crown. And again a depth of understanding of the Six Nations that made up of Longhouse in this their last days as a nation. The love story is Chambers, which means a little too sweet for my taste, but not overwhelming. A good book and a good read.	image	1907 edition
Iole	1905		(2 color plates by Karl Anderson, many b/w drawings by Arthur C. Becker)	cover dust jacket
Forest-land	1905
The tracer of lost persons	1906	Mr. And Mrs. William A. Hall	The more I read the later works of Robert W. Chambers, the more amazed I become at the watershed work that is his second published work, "The King in Yellow". Everything Chambers writes it his later career finds its origin in TKIY, his one true masterpiece. "The Tracer of Lost Persons" is no exception. It owes much to "The Repairer of Reputations". The "Tracer", Mr. Keen, is a sanitized and sane Mr. Wilde, and more the shame. The "Repairer" had deep and cosmic forces of darkness at his beck, Mr. Keen has non of the mystery nor madness, non of the diabolic, that made Mr. Wilde a evil force of the unnatural gods and darkness. There is also no real depth or human quality to the "Tracer". He is all knowing and all seeing and therefore a bore. He is used only as a cheap tool to promote cheaper love stories between people that have very little depth to call their own. "The Tracer of Lost Persons" owes a debt greater than just self-plagiarism, it also owes a debt to a story called "The Final Problem" that was written in 1893 by a failed English eye doctor. "…. Why, man, the Pinkerton system itself has become merely a detail in the immense complexity of the system of control which the Tracer of Lost Persons exercises over this entire continent. The urban police, the State constabulary of Pennsylvania, the rural systems of surveillance, the Secret Service, all municipal, provincial, State, and national organizations form but a few strands in the universal web he has woven. Custom officials, revenue officers, the militia of the States, the army, the navy, the personnel of every city, State, and national legislative bodies form interdependent threads in the mesh he is master of; and, like a big beneficent spider, he sits in the center of his web, and able to tell by the slightest tremor of any thread exactly where to begin investigations!"1 Professor Moriarty has come to join a whitewashed Mr. Wilde in the person of Mr. Keen, but that is not the only person that tries to reside under the skin of the Tracer. The Tracer of Lost Pesons gazed at them, meditatively joining the tips of his thin fingers.2 Sherlock Holmes, and Moriarty, and Mr. Wilde, Two parts Conan Doyle and one part early Chambers, but in and of itself not a bad book. It only suffers with comparison with the much better works it was taken from. The first story is nice in its way and has some charm. Mr. Gatewood is a bachelor who lives at his club and is slowly turning into a grump. His friend Kerns applies at The Tracer of Lost Persons to have Gatewood's ideal women found for him. The second story, one of the two fantastic stories in the book, deals with a soldier home on leave. He is haunted by visions of a women that he once saw on a cross town train. The Tracer must find her for him before the soldier has to go back to his regiment. He takes a picture of his vision and there is a code much like "The Dancing Men" that the Tracer salves with no problem and therefore no drama. In the third story Gatewood sics the Tracer on Mr. Kerns, who is a bit of a women hater because of a shipboard romance gone cruelly wrong in his past. Mr. Keen uses police, phone, and electric officials to do his work for him showing that he controls all the forces of society but never showing how he controls them in any believable way. The fourth story is the other fantastic story of this collection. It is one of the best, if not the best, story in the book. A young man falls in love with the lifelike remains of an Egyptian dancing girl. The Tracer has to solve the mystery of a Hieroglyphic message. Chambers shows himself quite competent, with a good working knowledge of glyphs for his day and age. The fifth, and last, story is quite funny. It is a love story of course, but one with a tongue firmly in someone's cheek. An artist based on Charles Dana Gibson has fallen in love with the ideal women that he is famous for drawing. The Tracer has been working on the case for over a year and has just 2 days left to find her and get them married before the artist loses the money left to him by an aunt who wanted him to marry by his 25th birthday. His ideal women is a doctor that has no time for men for she is devoting her life to the study on a decease so rare that there has only been one known case of it. She spends all of her time reading the 18 volume case history of the one victim of the dreaded aliment. I will tell you no more about this charming story. For my money, the 1st, 4th, and 5th stories are the ones to read. This work is not up to "The Mystery Choice" or "The Tree of Heaven" but is better than "The Better Man". 1. The Tracer of Lost Person – D. Appleton and Company – 1st edition – 1906 - Chapter 12 - page 136 The Tracer of Lost Person – D. Appleton and Company – 1st edition – 1906 - Chapter 14 - page 147 ----2nd review--- The Tracer of Lost Persons, 1906, is an episodic novel with detective elements. The central character, a Mr. Keene, is a figure who resembles Sherlock Holmes in that he's both somewhat mysterious and apparently omniscient, but a parallel to Edgar A. Poe's Auguste Dupin might be more accurate, since one episode of the novel details the decoding of a cipher obviously derived from Poe's The Gold Bug. Keene, who was called Bayard Keene on the radio back in the 1930's, was still alive on television during the 50's and perhaps even later. A radio drama based on it was still going strong in 1954. Chapters seventeen through twenty of the book, containing roughly ten thousand words, can be defined as being fantastic.	image
Mountain-land	1906
The fighting chance	1906	My father	Story of a society drunk fighting alcoholism with the love of a good but flawed woman. His first best seller, I found it hard to read. - Wall Street battle royal, where love as well as finance hangs in the balance	plain cover
The younger set	1907	My Mother		plain cover
The tree of heaven	1907	To my Friend Austin Corbin	Just finished reading the 1907 first edition of this book. There are some very good ideas here and the prose to back them up but the sugary romance themes that dominated Chambers' later career are starting to show a little too much here for my taste. The Carpet of Belshazzar, the piece that binds together all of the other stories, is dark and brilliant. The Golden Pool is great and touching, a good piece of prose. The Tree of Dreams and The Swastika are light and funny, if anything dealing with a swastika can be said to be funny after 1938. Try to remember that this was written in 1907. The Sign of Venus is just plain fun, Most of the rest are okay to better than okay.	image	First Edition
Garden-land	1907
Some ladies in haste	1908
The firing line	1908	Margery Chambers		plain cover	Movie
Hide and seek in forest-land	1909
The danger mark	1909		drinking as the main problem - in the vain of "the Fighting Chance" this time with a female.		Movie
Special messenger	1909	George F. D. Trask in memory of our first martial exploits in the nursery	A girl from the South is a Civil War female spy for the North. A group of connected short stories about this girl, the daughter of a dead Union solider, who becomes an all knowing union spy. Some times she is too all knowing to the point of taking the danger from the story but not to the point of being boring. In the first stories she is more fallible and therefore more entertaining. We first meet her through her little brother who brings home a mounted band leader thinking he is a general. We meet her in her innocence and from a distance. This serves as a motivational piece. She falls in love with him and then he is killed. It is out of revenge and no longer having anything to live for that she throws herself into the war and makes a place for herself. In Chapter II we meet her in her prime and her reputation proceeds her even as the minions of the South pursue her. She is hours ahead of them with no way to out run sudden death when she takes a chance and confides in a farmer who seems to have friendly feelings for the North. She takes the place of his daughter and he hitches her horse to a wagon and leads the rebels a merry chase. She entrains and wins the heart of the officer who is following her. She knocks him out and, pausing only to kiss him with tears in her eyes, steals his horse. In Chapter III she catches a Southern spy and does her duty even thou she can so easily put herself in his shoes. In Chapter IV she is caught in a trap with no way of escape. Her past comes back to haunt her. Chapter V she shows mercy to a deserter. In Chapter VI we meet ghosts from her childhood and again she is merciful. The mercy that was shown to her has seemed to change her. In Chapter VII she losses a race to a pass were an ambush is being prepared. Chapter VIII is the last story in the book. The Special Messenger is given a suicide mission and meets a ghost of her past. a fun read.	image
The green mouse	1910	John Corbin	A rather silly book, Sci-fi is always a weak suite for Chambers. The concept underlying the book is of a machine that can link together the true and fated love for anyone that uses it. A group of very light, fluffy short love stories about a group on people that I really didn't care that much about. The first story had some depth to its beginning but it all evaporated into silly nothing.	image
Ailsa Paige	1910	To the Conquerors Who Won Immortal Victory	One of the best opening ever written. Historical love store set against the backdrop of the Civil War. The hero finds that his birth is in question on the day that his fortune is lost. He falls in love but can not marry without disgracing his mother’s memory. He laughs at the fools going off to the war between the states until his fortune turns and then goes off to the war only to find himself under the command of the man who ruined his mother and may or may not be his father. Love, courage and war. CIVIL WAR ZOUAVES LANCERS	image	First Edition Dust Jacket
The common law	1911	Charles Dana Gibson a friend of many years	Artist and model in love. He is from the upper class and can not marry her because of his family, she just wants to climb in bed with him without ritual of the church but he won’t. Old reworked plot aimed at the shop girl market but still will written, with good prose.	image	Movie
Daughter of revolution	1911
Pro bono publico	1911
The adventures of a modest man	1911
Lords of creation	1911
Japonette	1912			image	First Edition Dust Jacket
The streets of Ascalon	1912	Eulalie Ashmore
Blue-bird weather	1912	To Joseph Lee of Needwood Forest	Blue-Bird Weather is not really long enough to be a novel, or even a novella. It is more like a longer than short, short story that has been packaged to look something like a novel. The margins are very large (the bottom is 2" and the side and top are 1") and the actual type space on the page is only 3" by 4˝" and the text is double spaced at that. Half of the stories in "The Better Man" seem like dry runs for Blue-Bird Weather which that may well have been. If that is the case then this is the pick of litter, even if the ending is telegraphed. The book is finely illustrated with 7 of the nicest Charles Dana Gibson ink drawings I have ever seen, two being double page spreads. (remember that Gibson and Chambers were class mates and very good friends. This is the best doing the best for a friend) The book is worth the price for the artwork alone. An okay read for a Chambers romance.		Plain blue cover
The business of life	1913
The gay rebellion	1913		women's revolt? a delightful novel based on the early women's movement,( Four full page prints and the rest of the volume is peppered with spot illo's)	image
The hidden children	1914		Revolutionary War in New York (part of the Cardigan series) Good look at the end of the Long House and how the members of the 6 Nations that sided with the crown lost their land and place it America. The look at the customs of the tribes is in depth and very well written. In contrast, the love story was harder to take than most. Maybe it is because the rest of the writing is so good that the pure love from afar stuff is so hard to take. Maybe I have read too many RWC hopeless love stories. The cute banter and the flirting was more that I could take. If I had to read of one more simpering bovine backwoods virgin masticating the word "La" I would have screamed. Still, the history is very good and worth overlooking the love story.	1st A L Burt	First Edition Dust Jacket 1st Reprint Movie
Anne's bridge	1914
Between friends	1914				Movie
Quick action	1914		A psychic novel
Who goes there!	1915		HISTORY, AMERICAN		Movie
Athalie	1915	My Friend Messmore Kendall	A shocker in it's day. A weak willed rich man marries the wrong women to please his mother. He can not live with his wife because she wants nothing but his name and will not divorce. He lives in sin with Athalie, his clairvoyant lover, who dies in childbirth. They are reunited in the afterlife.	image	First Edition Dust Jacket Movie
Police!!!	1915		Police !!!, 1915, is a sequel of sorts to In Search of the Unknown. We are confronted with even more lost species, including mammoths in the Canadian glaciers, a group of "cave-ladies" in the Everglades, a gigantic worm burrowing beneath the fields of upstate New York, a school of minnows the size of Pullman cars, and so forth. Fantastic stories include The Third Eye, The Immortal, The Ladies of the Lake, One Over, Un Peu d'Amour and The Eggs of the Silver Moon.	image
Play-girl in fiction	1916
The better man	1916		The first 1/3 of the book is about upstate New York. The first 5 or 6 stories are all cut from the same cloth and suffer from juxtaposition since they are almost all the same story. Most are about some rich man who for some reason is a game warden in up state New York. All or almost all of them deal with beautiful women and degenerate backwoods hunters. This is like a dry run for "The Flaming Jewel". "Hell's Ashes" is the best of the lot maybe because it does not have a love interest. "The Germ of Madness" is the most fun of this group and really does not fit the mold. It is about a young man vacationing in Saratoga. He goes a little mad because of the straight lace and answers a telegram call that is not for him. The rest of the book deals mostly with old Southern families down on their fortune always with a beautiful daughter and rich men from the North going down to Florida. "Number Seven" is much the same story but is notable because of Chambers' broadside of inspired writers of great art. There are some really great Henry Hutt illustrations also. Not his best, but better than "Barbarians". Many thanks to: Thomas W Grzeskowiak for donating this book. Thanks Tom		Plain Red Cover
The girl Philippa	1916				Movie
Barbarians	1917	To Lyle and Madeleine Mahan	A piece of jingoistic crap, well written crap but crap still, his all time worst, World War I anti-German propaganda. He paints all Germans, even German Americans, as Huns and monsters. Written for the bucks.	image	First Edition Dust Jacket
The dark star	1917			image	First Edition Dust Jacket Movie
The restless sex	1918				Movie
My woman types - RWC	1918
The laughing girl	1918
In secret	1919	Eleanor and Wheaton Vaughan	best seller No. 10 - 1919 / World War I spy and code breaker story starts in New York City with a rich girl about town as the lead character. She is trying to get to the front and do her duty, not just play at spy. She finds and rescues a Scott American who has excepted a German prison camp. He has been turned into a alcoholic by the Germans who want to find out if he knows about the great secret. This gives Chambers a chance to revisit the theme of alcoholism that brought him his first best seller. There is a lot of cops and robbers in Scotland and France and then they sneak into Switzerland to discover "The Great Secret". The "secret" is far fetched and not much of a secret in the book. The last half of the book when German agents are hunting them through the Swiss alps is reminiscent of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs but less so. When the heroine is about to be raped by the Boche Burroughs would have switched to another character and left us spell bound for 50 pages, Chambers has a shot ring out and it is over. The end is rushed. We cut to a year later and they come back from there mission. I, for one felt a little cheated. All in all a good read. Great beginning, as always. A mixed bag. Much, much better that his 1917 Barbarians. I can see the marks of the magazine on the flow of the story particularly at the end.	image
The moonlit way	1919
The crimson tide	1919	To Margarent Illington Bowes and Edward J. Bowes (3 hearts below)	Strong beginning as always, girl companion to Russian Royal Family wants to become a nun, when the Romanoffs are offed she renounces God, the Church and of course marriage. After the Russian stuff the work falls apart. Never rewritten from magazine. Plot line is muddled. They make up in one line and the next don’t see each other for months. One of his worst since Barbarians, very preachy with old themes over worked by Chambers, sad to see how far he has fallen since TKIY.
A story of primitive love	1920
The slayer of souls	1920		The Slayer of Souls, concerns a young American girl raised by the Yezidee-Mongols, a murderous cult of killers with psychic power, who want to rule the world. Because of her training in the East and her own powers, she is all that stands in the way of their evil plans. With the help of a standard issue dashing viral hero, the state department, and a female friend from her temple days they face danger and she falls in love with the hero. Chambers before 1900 was a force to be reckoned with in weird literature. By the time of this book his sugary romance style had corroded his formidable dark prose but there is still power here. This is his standard romance with all kinds of weird things thrown in. Every time you turn around some Mongol is stealing the bed sheets for his death shroud and going off to die. This is not The King in Yellow but it is still a fun book and well worth the time if for no other reason then Robert W. Chambers wrote it. H. P. Lovecraft loved this book, maybe because he saw Chambers returning to his roots. Great ideas, good prose, written too fast most likely for a magazine sale. Could have used with a re-write.	image	First Edition Dust Jacket
The little red foot	1921	My Son Robert H. Chambers	Revolutionary War adventure set after the death of Sir William Johnson in Chambers’ beloved Broadalbin forests. One of his best. Well researched. Still driven by love theme. (part of the Cardigan series)	plain cover
The flaming jewel	1922		Adventure in the north woods, plots and counter plots over royal jewels. Very well written. Nice use of irony, setting, and pacing. Works so well because the love angle is not between the main Characters.	image
Eris	1922		Farm girl becomes star. She is a throw back to her grandmother, a swan in the land of ducks. A writer is in love with her but social differences stand in the way. Unconsummated marriage theme as in other works.
The talkers	1923		The Talkers, 1923, is, according to E.F. Bleiler, "a tedious novel about a love triangle between a young man named Sutton, a woman named Gilda Greenway, and an unpleasant hypnotist named Sadoul." ( Bleiler, Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror, p. 744. ) It's a marginally fantastic novel, and in certain respects an adaptation of the Trilby theme, in which a murdered woman is reanimated with two souls by a medical experimenter. He also called it "more distressing and unpleasant than terrifying".	image
The hi-jackers	1923
America; or, The sacrifice	1924		Illustrated with Scenes from the Motion Picture New York Grosset & Dunlap 1924 Photoplay edition issued to coincide with the release of the D.W. Griffith directed film epic about the American Revolutionary War starring Neil Hamilton and Carol Dempster.	1924 40's 40's	First Edition Dust Jacket 40's DJ 40's cover Movie
The girl in golden rags	1924
The mystery lady	1925
The man they hanged	1926		Capt. Kid as wronged hero told from the point of view of a noble shipmate	plain cover
The drums of Aulone	1927		Huguenots in France are being killed out by the church and state. The daughter of the noble head of an army must run for her life into the new world. She is forced to marry to protect her true love. She plans to kill herself to keep the marriage unconsummated. Set against the Indian Wars in Canada, a fine historical work.	image	First Edition Cover
The Sun Hawk	1928
The rogue's moon	1928		Nancy Topsfield, the orphan of a sea captain killed by pirates, dresses as a boy to war with all pirates. As a boy she is the indentured servant in a tavern frequented by pirates. She saves a ruined son of nobility, John Ross, from signing on with Captain Death. Ross becomes a pirate catcher. Just by happenstance she is a part of every major historical even dealing with pirates in the Americas that happened in her lifetime. She is thought to be a pirate herself a time or two and just misses being hanged by the crown or raped by Blackbeard. A tale of piracy in Colonial America, notably Edward Teach ("Blackbeard"). .	image	First Edition Jacket
The happy parrot	1929		Very strange story of pirates and slave runners just before the War of 1812. The import of slaves from Africa has been outlawed but slavery is stilled practiced both north and south. [the South was in favor of this law because it increased the value of the slaves they already had] Eric Strake is a sea man in the China Trade who is out of work because of the British embargo and blockade of American ports. He meets a well to do girl whose parents died in the France Revolution, herself barely excepting with her life. Her uncle finds them in a drunken and compromised position and a savage fight ensues. Strakes bests the uncle and gains his respect and the captaincy of the slave ship "The Happy Parrot" . The book deals with the slave trade from the point of view of the captain of a slave ship who feels that there is nothing wrong with what he is doing. The "N" word is used often in speech as befits the speech of the times. This is unsettling to anyone in this day and age but was not so when the book was written. A disturbing book because of the historical fact of the lack of remorse on the part of the "hero" and the men like him. Mr. Strikes truly believes that the blacks are better off as slaves than at home in Africa "and anyway there would be no cotton, sugar, or tobacco without slaves". I am not sure what Chambers is trying to show us. His treatment is too fair handed to both sides of the question to really be an attempt to show the horrors of slavery even if there are many horrible scenes of foul treatment in the "Black Ivory" Trade. The end is graphed on to the book with a jump in time to the War of 1812 and a sea battle between the U.S. Constitution and the HMS Guerriere. It then jumps in the last two pages to Strikes after the war at home with his new family at ease and happy. The book raises a lot of questions. I for one did not like the hero living happily ever after. I did not think him much of a hero, even if he was a prince among the men of his times. This book should be read if for no other reason than the insight into the mind of the times. (A.L. Burt reprint)
The Mask	1929		Recycle from "The King in Yellow" I have the first cardboard cover edition from 1929	image	First hardback jacket
The rake and the hussy	1929
Beating wings	1930
The painted minx	1930		HISTORICAL FICTION OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Gitana	1931		HISTORICAL FICTION OF THE MEXICAN WAR, PORTRAITS OF ZACHARY TAYLOR, JEFFERSON DAVIS, ECT
War paint and rouge War paint and rouge	1931		HISTORICAL FICTION WESTERN?
Whistling cat	1932
Whatever love is	1933
The young man's girl	1934
Secret service operator 13	1934		Civil War spy. Engaging novel about a female secret agent during the Civil War. - THE DANGEROUS ADVENTURES OF A BEAUTIFUL UNION SPY AND A GALLANT CONFEDERATE AGENT.	image	First Edition Dust Jacket Movie
Love and the lieutenant	1935			image	First Edition Dust Jacket
The gold chase	1935		HISTORICAL FICTION FLORIDA TREASURE HUNT. BURIED TREASURE OF DE SOTO'S GREAT MARCH THROUGH THE WILDS OF FLORIDA.
The fifth horseman	1937
Marie Halkett	1937
Smoke of battle	1938
River-land
Alfred Hitchcock 1989--Nov			(Includes Robert W. Chambers)
Famous Fantastic Mysteries			(Includes Robert W. Chambers, Augusta Groner)
Kings of Horror Fantasy Reader			Machen, Arthur (In collaboration with Robert W. Chambers) know of a paperback from 1975, do not know if it is a reprint of a book under another title

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