CHAMBERS, ROBERT WILLIAM (May 26, 1865 - Dec. 16, 1933. Novelist and illustrator, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., the elder son of William and Caroline (Boughton) Chambers. On his father's side he was of Scottish ancestry; on his mother's side he was descended from early Rhode Island forebears, among whom was Roger Williams. His father was a successful lawyer. While a student at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute he showed aptitude for painting, and after study in the Student's Art League, where he became a friend of Charles Dana Gibson, he went to Paris. There he studied for seven years at Julian's academy, exhibiting in the Salon in 1889. Returning to the United States in 1893 he set up a studio in New York City and became a successful illustrator for Life, Vogue, and other periodicals. Almost by chance he became also an author. Previously, while making sketches of the Latin Quarter, it had occurred to him to attempt to portray in fiction the same scenes that he had illustrated, and he embodied the result in a book entitled In the Quarter, published by F. T. Neely in 1894. He now plunged into authorship, painting by day, while the light was favorable, and writing voluminously at night. Finding that he could work better in the country, he moved to the ancestral estate at Broadalbin in Fulton County, N.Y., established early in the nineteenth century by his grandfather, Dr. William Chambers.

He produced novels and short stories in rapid succession, often using plots based on French history and unusual, and sometimes bizarre, adventure. The early works included The King in Yellow (1895), a volume of short stories; The Red Republic (1895); The Maker of Moons (1895); A King and a Few Dukes 1896); The Mystery of Choice (1897); Ashes of Empire (1898); The Haunts of Men (1898); The Cambric Mask (1899); Outsiders (1899); The Conspirators (1900). An interest in the American Revolution led him to attempt to tell its history in fiction in Cardigan (1901); The Maid-at-Arms (1902); The Reckoning (1905); The Little Red Foot (1921); and other stories. Of these, Cardigan, which deals with Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations, was perhaps the most successful, winning wide sales and critical approval. In With the Band (1895) he tried his hand at ballad verse; and in Outdoorland (1902), Orchard-Land (1903), River-Land (1904), Forest-Land (1905), and Mountain-Land (1906) he produced nature stories illustrated in color for juvenile readers.

In The Tracer of Lost Persons (1906) Chambers devised a type of detective tale that many years later proved acceptable for radio drama. Such novels as The Fighting Chance (1906), The Firing Line (1908), Some Ladies in Haste (1908), and The Streets of Ascalon (1912) made clever and realistic use of contemporary society; Special Messenger (1909), Ailsa Paige (1910), and Whistling Cat (1932) were novels of the American Civil War, while Who Goes There? (1915), written while the Germans were passing through Belgium, was the first of a series of romances of the First World War. A drama, The Witch of Eliangowan, based on Sir Walter Scott and written by Chambers as a vehicle for Ada Kehan, was produced in 1897; and Iole (1905) was dramatized in 1913. He also wrote two librettos for operas, numerous short stories, and articles on military matters for the New York Times. In The Man They Hanged (1926) he embodied in fiction his conviction that Captain Kidd was a maligned character.

In his later fiction he tended to be more sensational, and the critics dealt with him less kindly. He continued to write industriously, doing his manuscripts in longhand, and sometimes carrying forward three or four novels at once. Among the later ones were The Drums of Aulone (1927); The Sun Hawk (1928), The Rogue's Moon (1928), The Happy Parrot (1929), The Painted Minx (1930), The Rake and the Hussy (1930), Gitana (1931), War Paint and Rouge (1931), and Whatever Love Is (1933). When he died his serials were running in as least two popular magazines. In all, he is said to have produced seventy-two books, besides some verse and much short fiction. His style has been compared to that of Anthony Hope, and though often wildly romantic, he sometimes approached the realism of Edith Wharton. He never deluded himself as to the quality of his literary work and admitted frankly that it was not great literature. His earlier historical novels, however, were generally regarded by those competent to judge as of no little excellence.

Though he had a study in New York City for use in midwinter, he loved his 800-acre estate, where the manner house was remodeled and enlarged for him. He was a collector of butterflies, of fine old furniture, and of Chinese and Japanese antiques, He married, July 12, 1898, Elsa Vaughn Moller and was survived by a son, Robert E. S. Chambers. He died in a New York hospital after an operation for an intestinal ailment and was buried in the family plot at broadalbin.

[N. Y. Times, Dec. 17, 1933, N. Y. Herald Tribune, Dec. 17, 1933: S. J. Kunitz. Authors Today and Yesterday (1933), pp. 149-151; Bookman, Feb. 1910, pp. 612-919; Forum, May 1918, pp. 564-691; Howard Swiggeit, War out of Niagara (1933); Who's Who in America, 1932-1933.]

John C. French