Edward Gorey's Illustrated Covers for Literary Classics

SPOOKY TREATMENTS OF KAFKA, DICKENS, CONRAD, AND MORE

EMILY TEMPLEAPRIL 13, 2018

Between 1953 and 1960, before he was a household name as the master of the cutely macabre, Edward Gorey worked as a book designer and illustrator for Doubleday Anchor. During his tenure, he designed some fifty book covers (and in some cases, drew inside illustrations) for their new paperback series, which was aimed at “serious” readers and students. (He also illustrated and designed for lots of other writers’ books outside of the Doubleday gig, of course, in addition to writing and illustrating over a hundred of his own.) As collector Lance Casebeer wrote, “there is a haunting thematic consistency about the Gorey-drawn covers.

 

On the Dark(er) Side of the Perpetually Dark Edward Gorey

FROM WITTGENSTEIN TO THE GOLDEN GIRLS, A MAN OF VARIED INTERESTS

GABRIELLE BELLOTMAY 3, 2017

“A is for AMY who fell down the stairs. B is for BASIL assaulted by bears.” These were the first sentences I read by Edward Gorey, whose last name seemed too delightfully perfect to be real, like Lemony Snicket. I was in a bookshop in London, holding a novelty copy of The Gashlycrumb Tinies, an abecedarian in which each letter reveals the grisly and somehow perversely delightful death of an unfortunate child. Clara wastes away; Desmond, perhaps mercifully, is tossed from a sleigh; Olive, infinitely unlucky, is run through with an awl. It was like reading bedtime stories for semi-adults, and it was too glorious not to purchase. It was the kind of cute-brutal book that ironically seemed like it might cheer the right kind of wrong person up on a bad day, not unlike Tim Burton’s Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy.

Edward Gorey's "Great Simple Theory About Art" is essential reading for writers.

EMILY TEMPLEFEBRUARY 19, 2025

“Many of Edward Gorey’s most fervent devotees,” Stephen Schiff wrote in a profile of the artist in The New Yorker in 1992, “think he’s (a) English and (b) dead. Actually, he has never so much as visited either place.” Alas, he has now visited at least one: Gorey—born nearly a century ago, on February 22, 1925—died in 2000, leaving behind a vast catalogue of work—the macabre, deadpan, funny and sometimes brutal illustrations and short narratives for which he has become a cult icon—and a mysterious personal legacy.

Edward Gorey / A Terrible Thing

Edward Gorey

(February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000)

 This goes out by special request to my friend Marc Ponomareff.

EDWARD GOREY

A TERRIBLE THING

Pity the poor books editors in the 1950s when confronted with yet another manuscript by the persistent Edward Gorey. Back then no one knew quite what to call his small gems with their manic pen-and-ink illustrations of overstuffed drawing rooms, set somewhere between the Edwardian era and the 1920s, and with punch lines taken from the unspeakable horror of their well-dressed characters’ untimely demises. 

The rest of the article is here and well worth the time to read, as it contains several humorous anecdotes that depict the eccentric Gorey quite well.

 “The Curious Sofa,” which was published under the anagrammatic name “Ogdred Weary” and contains the immortal line: “Still later Gerald did a terrible thing to Elsie with a saucepan.” 

“My mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible. I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that's what the world is like.” 

― Edward Gorey, Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

The Gashlycrumb Tinies

An Alphabet Book

“All the things you can talk about in anyone's work are the things that are least important.... You can describe all the externals of a performance - everything, in fact, but what really constitutes its core. Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is what's left over after you've explained everything else.”  

“Nonsense really demands precision. Like in the Jumblies. Their heads are green and their hands are blue. And they went to sea in a sieve. Which is all quite concrete, goofy as it is.”

~Edward Gorey

Interviewer: What is your greatest regret? 

Gorey: That I don't have one” 

― Edward Gorey, Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

“What is, is, and what might have been could never have existed.” 

― Edward Gorey, Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

"Books. Cats. Life is good.” 

(Note to readers:  I've had a lot of problems with the template, which have resulted in changes to the look of the blog and with which I am not at all happy. Until I find something that works and that I can live with visually, this will have to do. If you have any suggestions or comments about what the new look, please let me know.)  
~Gina


http://thepagansphinx.blogspot.com/2012/04/edward-gorey.html


Read also
Edward Gorey / The Gashlycrumb Tinies
http://losarciniegas.blogspot.com/2013/05/edward-gorey-gashlycrumb-tinies_18.html

http://losarciniegas.blogspot.com/search/label/Edward%20Gorey

Edward Gorey / The Gashlycrumb Tinies

THE GASHLYCRUMB

by Edward Gorey