Robert William Chambers (1865–1933) was an American artist and fiction writer, born in Brooklyn. He first trained in the visual arts at the Art Students' League and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, selling illustrations to magazines before turning to fiction.
His most famous work, "The King in Yellow" (1895), is a collection of weird stories connected by a fictitious play of the same title that drives those who read it insane. E. F. Bleiler described it as one of the most important works of American supernatural fiction.
The fictional concepts Chambers introduced — Carcosa, Hastur, and the Yellow Sign — became central to weird fiction and deeply influenced H. P. Lovecraft, later absorbed into the Cthulhu Mythos.