Edward Gorey | |
|---|---|
 Gorey setting up mannequins inHenri Bendel's window, 1978 | |
| Born | Edward St. John Gorey (1925-02-22)February 22, 1925 |
| Died | April 15, 2000(2000-04-15) (aged 75) |
| Education | Art Institute of Chicago,Harvard University |
| Known for | Writer, illustrator, poet, costume designer |
| Notable work | The Gashlycrumb Tinies,The Doubtful Guest,Mystery! |
| Movement | Literary nonsense,surrealism |
| Awards | Tony Award for Best Costume Design Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis |
Edward St. John Gorey[1] (February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000) was anAmerican writer,Tony Award-winning costume designer,[2] and artist, noted for his own illustrated books as well as cover art and illustration for books by other writers.[3] His characteristic pen-and-ink drawings often depict vaguely unsettling narrative scenes inVictorian andEdwardian settings.
Gorey was born inChicago. His parents, Helen Dunham (née Garvey) and Edward Leo Gorey,[4] divorced in 1936 when he was 11. His father remarried in 1952 when he was 27. His stepmother wasCorinna Mura (1910–1965), a cabaret singer who had a small role inCasablanca as the woman playing the guitar while singing "La Marseillaise" at Rick's Café Américain. His father was briefly a journalist. Gorey's maternal great-grandmother, Helen St. John Garvey, was a nineteenth-centurygreeting card illustrator,[5] from whom he claimed to have inherited his talents.
From 1934 to 1937, Gorey attended public school in the Chicago suburb ofWilmette, Illinois, where his classmates includedCharlton Heston,Warren MacKenzie, andJoan Mitchell.[6] Some of his earliest preserved work appears in the Stolp School yearbook for 1937.[7] Afterward, he attended theFrancis W. Parker School in Chicago. He spent 1944 to 1946 in theArmy atDugway Proving Ground inUtah. He then attendedHarvard University, beginning in 1946 and graduating in the class of 1950; he studied French and roomed with poetFrank O'Hara.[8] Starting in 1951, Gorey illustrated poetry books byMerrill Moore forTwayne Publishers includingCase Record from a Sonnetorium (many illustrations by Gorey, 1951), andMore Clinical Sonnets (1953).[9]
In the early 1950s, Gorey, with a group of recent Harvard and Radcliffe alumni includingAlison Lurie (1947),John Ashbery (1949),Donald Hall (1951), andFrank O'Hara (1950), amongst others, founded the Poets' Theatre in Cambridge, which was supported by Harvard faculty membersJohn Ciardi andThornton Wilder.[8][10][11]
He frequently stated that his formal art training was "negligible"; Gorey studied art for one semester at theSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1943.[12]
From 1953 to 1960, he lived inManhattan and worked for the Art Department ofDoubleday Anchor, where he illustrated book covers,[13] added illustrations to text,[13] and providedtypographic design. He illustrated works as diverse asBram Stoker'sDracula,H. G. Wells'The War of the Worlds,[14] andT. S. Eliot'sOld Possum's Book of Practical Cats.[15] Throughout his career, he illustrated over 200 book covers for Doubleday Anchor, Random House's Looking Glass Library, Bobbs-Merrill, and as a freelance artist.[16] In later years he produced cover illustrations and interior artwork for many children's books byJohn Bellairs, as well as books begun by Bellairs and continued byBrad Strickland after Bellairs' death.
His first independent work,The Unstrung Harp, was published in 1953. He also published under various pen names, some of which wereanagrams of his first and last names, such as Ogdred Weary,[17] Dogear Wryde, Ms. Regera Dowdy, and dozens more. His books also feature the names Eduard Blutig ("Edward Gory"), a German-languagepun on his own name, and O. Müde (German for O. Weary).
At the prompting of Harry Stanton, an editor and vice president atAddison-Wesley, Gorey collaborated on a number of works (and continued a lifelong correspondence) withPeter F. Neumeyer.[18]
The New York Times credits bookstore owner Andreas Brown and his store, theGotham Book Mart, with launching Gorey's career: "It became the central clearing house for Mr. Gorey, presenting exhibitions of his work in the store's gallery and eventually turning him into an international celebrity."[19]
Gorey's illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and ostensiblyVictorian andEdwardian settings, have long had acult following.[20] He made a notable impact on the world of theater with his designs for the1977 Broadway revival ofDracula, for which he won theTony Award for Best Costume Design and was nominated for theTony Award for Best Scenic Design.[21] In 1980, Gorey became particularly well known for his animated introduction to thePBS seriesMystery! In the introduction of eachMystery! episode, hostVincent Price would welcome viewers to "Gorey Mansion".
Because of the settings and style of Gorey's work, many people have assumed he was British; in fact, he only left the U.S. once, for a visit to the Scottish Hebrides. In later years, he lived year-round inYarmouth Port, Massachusetts, onCape Cod, where he wrote and directed numerous evening-length entertainments, often featuring his ownpapier-mâché puppets, an ensemble known as Le Theatricule Stoique. The first of these productions,Lost Shoelaces, premiered inWoods Hole, Massachusetts, on August 13, 1987.[22] The last wasThe White Canoe: anOpera Seria for Hand Puppets, for which Gorey wrote thelibretto, with a score by the composerDaniel James Wolf. The opera, which was based onThomas Moore's poemThe Lake of the Dismal Swamp, was performed under the direction of Carol Verburg, a close friend and neighbor of the artist, after Gorey died. Herbert Senn and Helen Pond, two renowned set designers, created a puppet stage for the opera. In the early 1970s, Gorey wrote an unproduced screenplay for asilent film,The Black Doll.
After Gorey's death, one of his executors, Andreas Brown, turned up a large cache of unpublished work, both complete and incomplete. Brown described the find as "ample material for many future books and for plays based on his work".[23]
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Gorey was noted for his love of theNew York City Ballet. He attended every performance and some rehearsals for 25 years.[24]
CriticDavid Ehrenstein, writing inGay City News, asserts that Gorey was discreet about his sexuality in the "Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell era" of the 1950s. "Stonewall changed all that—making gay a discussable mainstream topic," writes Ehrenstein. "But it didn't change things for Gorey. To those in the know, his sensibility was clearly gay, but his sexual life was as covert as his self was overt."[25]
Alexander Theroux states that when Gorey was pressed on the matter of hissexual orientation by "a rudeBoston Globe reporter," he replied, "I don't even know." Theroux is referring to Lisa Solod's September 1980Boston magazine interview with Gorey ("Edward Gorey: The Cape's master teller of macabre tales discusses death, decadence, and homosexuality"). Gorey's exact words were: "Well, I'm neither one thing nor the other particularly. I suppose I'm gay. But I don't really identify with it much. I am fortunate in that I am apparently reasonably undersexed or something. I do not spend my life picking up people on the streets. I was always reluctant to go to the movies with one of my friends because I always expected the police to come and haul him out of the loo at one point or the other. I know people who lead reallyoutrageous lives. I've never said I was gay, and I've never said I wasn't. A lot of people would say that I wasn't because I never do anything about it." Shortly thereafter, he says, "What I'm trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else."[26]
Gorey's remark"I suppose I'm gay" was omitted from the Lisa Solod interview when it appeared inAscending Peculiarity,[27] a collection of interviews with Gorey edited by the art criticKaren Wilkin.
From 1995 to his death in April 2000, Gorey was the subject of acinéma vérité–style documentary directed byChristopher Seufert. (As of 2025 the finished film and accompanying book are inpost-production.) His house, in Yarmouthport, Cape Cod, is the subject of two photography books entitledElephant House: Or, the Home of Edward Gorey, by Kevin McDermott and “Memento Gorey: The Last Interviews with Edward Gorey” by Seufert. The house is now theEdward Gorey House Museum.[28]
Gorey attended many adult art classes at Cape Cod Community College and served as a volunteer camera-person and master control operator at his nearby public access station, Cape Cod Community Television where he designed unique illustrations and community bulletin graphics.[citation needed]
Gorey left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust benefiting cats and dogs, as well as other species, including bats and insects.[23]
Gorey is typically described as anillustrator. His books may be found in the humor and cartoon sections of major bookstores, but books such asThe Object Lesson have earned serious critical respect as works ofsurrealist art. His experimentation—creating books that were wordless, books that were literally matchbox-sized,pop-up books, books entirely populated by inanimate objects—complicates matters still further. As Gorey told Lisa Solod ofThe Boston Globe, "Ideally, if anything were any good, it would be indescribable."[29] Gorey classified his own work asliterary nonsense, the genre made most famous byLewis Carroll andEdward Lear.
In response to being calledgothic, he stated, "If you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point. I'm trying to think if there's sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children—oh, how boring, boring, boring. AsSchubert said, there is no happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy nonsense, either."[30]
The exact number of books that Edward Gorey illustrated for other authors is unknown and estimated to be over 500. Some of the authors Gorey illustrated includeMerrill Moore,Samuel Beckett,Edward Lear,John Bellairs,H. G. Wells,Alain-Fournier,Charles Dickens,T. S. Eliot,Hilaire Belloc,Muriel Spark,Florence Parry Heide,John Updike,John Ciardi,Felicia Lamport andJoan Aiken.[31]
Gorey himself wrote 116 books.[32]
Many of Gorey's early works were published obscurely, making them rare and expensive.[35] He published four omnibus editions that collect as many as 15 of his books into one volume:
Gorey was very fond of word games, particularlyanagrams. He wrote many of his books under pseudonyms that usually were anagrams of his own name (most famously Ogdred Weary). Some of them are listed below, with the corresponding book title(s). Eduard Blutig is also a word game: "Blutig" is German (the language from which these two books purportedly were translated) for "bloody" or "gory".
Gorey has become an iconic figure in thegoth subculture. Events themed on his works and decorated in his characteristic style are common in the moreVictorian-styled elements of the subculture, notably theEdwardian costume balls held annually in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which include performances based on his works. The "Edwardian" in this case refers less to theEdwardian period of history than to Gorey, whose characters are depicted as wearing fashion styles ranging from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s.
Among the authors influenced by Gorey's work isDaniel Handler, who, under the pseudonym "Lemony Snicket", wrote the gothic children's book seriesA Series of Unfortunate Events. Shortly before Gorey's death, Handler sent a copy of the series' first two novels to him, with a letter "saying how much I admired his work, and how much I hoped that he would forgive what I'd stolen from him."
DirectorMark Romanek's music video for theNine Inch Nails song "The Perfect Drug" was designed specifically to resemble a Gorey book, with familiar Gorey elements including oversized urns,topiary plants, and glum, pale characters in full Edwardian costume.[39] Also,Caitlín R. Kiernan has published a short story entitled "A Story for Edward Gorey" (Tales of Pain and Wonder, 2000), which features Gorey's black doll.
A more direct link to Gorey's influence on the music world is evident inThe Gorey End,[40] an album recorded in 2003 byThe Tiger Lillies and theKronos Quartet. This album was a collaboration with Gorey, who liked previous work by The Tiger Lillies so much that he sent them a large box of his unpublished works, which were then adapted and turned into songs. Gorey died before hearing the finished album.
In 1976,jazz composerMichael Mantler recorded an album calledThe Hapless Child (Watt/ECM) withRobert Wyatt,Terje Rypdal,Carla Bley, andJack DeJohnette. It contains musical adaptations ofThe Sinking Spell,The Object Lesson,The Insect God,The Doubtful Guest,The Remembered Visit, andThe Hapless Child. The last three songs also have been published on his 1987Live album withJack Bruce,Rick Fenn, andNick Mason.
The opening titles of thePBS seriesMystery! were original art by Gorey, in an animated sequence co-directed byDerek Lamb.
In the last few decades of his life, Gorey merchandise became quite popular, with stuffed dolls, cups, stickers, posters, and other items available at malls around the United States. In 2002, a book of his interviews entitledAscending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey was released by author Karen Wilkin.[11]
In 2007,The Jim Henson Company announced plans to produce a feature film based onThe Doubtful Guest to be directed byBrad Peyton. No release date was given and there has been no further information since the announcement. The project was later announced again in 2021, with it now also being produced byAmblin Entertainment.
The online journalGoreyesque publishes artwork, stories, and poems in the spirit of Edward Gorey's work.[41] The journal is co-sponsored by the Department of Creative Writing atColumbia College Chicago andLoyola University Chicago.[42]Goreyesque was launched in tandem with the Chicago debut of two Gorey collections:Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey andG Is for Gorey. The collections were shown at theLoyola University Museum of Art (LUMA) in Chicago, Illinois from February 15 to June 15, 2014.[43][44]Goreyesque features the work of both emerging talents and seasoned professionals, such as writersSam Weller andJoe Meno.[45][46][47]
In 2018, Seattle based cartoonist Marc Palm illustrated"The Gashlygun Tinies" for the October issue of Mad Magazine. Palm drew direct inspiration from Gorey's work"The Gashlycrumb Tinies" for this comic strip style parody riffing directly on Gorey's macabre illustration style and dark storyline. While the original work by Gorey lists in alphabetical order a string of horrible deaths of young children from A-Z; in this more recent parody version, Marc Palm uses Gorey's intricate black and white line-work heavy illustrative style and works alongside comedy writer Matt Cohen who applies Gorey's iconic poeticallyalliterative narrative framework as a commentary on gun violence and school shootings.[48]
Contemporary American cartoonists with similarmacabre style include:
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