The King in Yellow: reading level, length and free edition

Name: The King in Yellow
Author: Robert W. Chambers

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers is a short stories in English. Our team rates it B2. It runs to 72,499 words with 8,101 different word forms, about 6–12 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Project Gutenberg.

By the Readlang Mobile team (an independent app, not affiliated with readlang.com). Updated 31 October 2026.

Author: Robert W. Chambers
Language: English
Level: B2
Form: short stories
Words: 72,499
Different word forms: 8,101
Forms for 95% / 98%: 4,477 / 6,652
Reading time: 6–12 h
Free edition: Project Gutenberg

"The King in Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers is a collection of short stories published in 1895. The book opens with supernatural horror tales connected by a forbidden play that drives readers to madness. A mysterious entity called the King in Yellow, an eerie Yellow Sign, and the cursed play itself haunt the first four stories, set in a future 1920s America and Paris. The collection gradually shifts tone, ending with romantic tales, but the opening horror stories have earned acclaim as classics of weird fiction.

Is The King in Yellow right for your level?

To recognise 95% of the running words in The King in Yellow, you need its 4,477 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 6,652. The median English B2 book in our table needs 3,747 forms for 95%, so by this measure the book is harder than most for its level: number 15 of 19, easiest first.

A word form is any spelling that appears in the text, so “walk” and “walked” count twice, and names count too. These numbers are a guide to how much vocabulary the book asks for, not a test. The level itself was set by hand by our team. Before you commit, read one page of the free edition and count the words you do not know: the one-page test takes two minutes.

Which words should you know before you start?

These are the words that The King in Yellow uses most often but that are not among the 2,000 most common word forms across all 309 English books in our library; the number is how many times each appears. Names of people and places are left out. Learning a handful of them first makes the opening chapters easier.

studio 42
marble 38
murmured 30
leaned 27
picked 21
demanded 20
stairs 20
fountain 20
sighed 20
falcon 19
sunlight 18
rolled 18
model 18
muttered 17
terrace 17

How does it begin?

“Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que la nôtre.... Voila toute la différence.”

From the Project Gutenberg edition, which is in the public domain. If this paragraph already feels slow, try a book one level lower.

How long does it take to read?

Hours to read *The King in Yellow* (72,499 words) at four reading speeds.
Words	100 wpm	150 wpm	200 wpm	250 wpm
72,499	12 h	8 h	6 h	5 h

Learners reading a book at their level often manage 100 to 150 words per minute, and readers in their first language 200 to 250. Where these speeds come from, and a calculator for your own: How long does it take to read a book?

Where can you read it for free?

The free edition is Project Gutenberg eBook #8492. Project Gutenberg publishes books that are in the public domain in the United States, as EPUB, Kindle and plain text, free and without an account. Copyright terms differ by country: if you live outside the United States, check that the book is out of copyright where you are before you download it.

To read it with a translation over every word you tap, open it in Readlang Mobile on iPhone or iPad.