I’m loving the second season of Penny Dreadful, which is set in that glorious decade known as “The Yellow Nineties.” I doubt many horror fans understand the significance of the color yellow in turn-of-the-century horror. We’ve all heard of The King in Yellow because Lovecraft praises Robert W Chambers as: “very genuine, though not without the typical mannered extravagance of the eighteen-nineties.” We also know HPL appreciated Arthur Machen: “Of living creators of cosmic fear raised to its most artistic pitch, few if any can hope to equal.” He even points out Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece: “Oscar Wilde may likewise be given a place amongst weird writers, both for certain of his exquisite fairy tales, and for his vivid Picture of Dorian Gray.” So what happened in the 1890s that was so important? And why yellow?
To understand this you have to know that the Victorian world was crumbling, slowly, but surely. Technology like the rail system gave us the need for magazines, something to read on the train, but it also opened many doors that the Victorians feared. Doors like women’s rights, workers’ rights, looser sexual practices, more foreigners in England as trade expanded, and new ideas around aesthetics. Technology and commerce came from Germany and America, while artistic and sexual ideas came from France. Here’s where the yellow comes in.
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https://www.michaelmay.online/2015/06/the-yellow-nineties-guest-post.html
