The Yellow Book was a literary journal published in London from 1894 until 1897. Aubrey Beardsley was a co-founder and served as the first arts editor as well as producing many of the illustrations. Although Oscar Wilde never wrote for it, he was associated with it and included it as a corrupting influence on Dorian in The Picture of Dorian Gray and is mentioned obliquely in An Ideal Husband. As the name suggests, the covers of these volumes were Yellow. It is extremely likely that the Yellow Book influenced the creation of The King In Yellow.