Alain-Fournier,
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
,
T. S. Eliot,
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...
(where new illustrations to ''
Cautionary Tales for Children
''Cautionary Tales for Children: Designed for the Admonition of Children between the ages of eight and fourteen years'' is a 1907 children's book written by Hilaire Belloc. It is a parody of the cautionary tales that were popular in the 19th cent ...
'' were published posthumously),
Muriel Spark
Dame Muriel Sarah Spark (née Camberg; 1 February 1918 – 13 April 2006). was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist.
Life
Muriel Camberg was born in the Bruntsfield area of Edinburgh, the daughter of Bernard Camberg, an ...
,
Florence Parry Heide,
John Updike,
John Ciardi
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Second ...
,
Felicia Lamport and
Joan Aiken
Joan Delano Aiken (4 September 1924 – 4 January 2004) was an English writer specialising in supernatural fiction and children's alternative history novels. In 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her services to children's literature. For ''The ...
.
Pseudonyms
Gorey was very fond of word games, particularly
anagrams. 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".
* Ogdred Weary ''The Curious Sofa'', ''The Beastly Baby''
* Mrs. Regera Dowdy ''The Pious Infant'', ''The Izzard Book''
* Eduard Blutig ''The Evil Garden'' (translated from ''Der Böse Garten'' by Mrs. Regera Dowdy), ''The Tuning Fork'' (translated from ''Der Zeitirrthum'' by Mrs. Regera Dowdy)
* Raddory Gewe ''The Eleventh Episode''
* Dogear Wryde ''The Broken Spoke/Cycling Cards''
* E. G. Deadworry ''The Awdrey-Gore Legacy'' and his grandson G.E. Deadworry
* D. Awdrey-Gore ''The Toastrack Enigma'', ''The Blancmange Tragedy'', ''The Postcard Mystery'', ''The Pincushion Affair'', ''The Toothpaste Murder'', ''The Dustwrapper Secret'' and ''The Teacosy Crime'' (Note: These books, although attributed to Awdrey-Gore in Gorey's book ''The Awdrey-Gore Legacy'', were not really written). She is a parody of Agatha Christie.
* Waredo Dyrge ''The Awdrey-Gore Legacy'' parody of
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot (, ) is a fictional Belgian detective created by British writer Agatha Christie. Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-running characters, appearing in 33 novels, two plays ('' Black Coffee'' and ''Alibi''), and more ...
* Edward Pig ''The Untitled Book''
* Wardore Edgy ''
SoHo Weekly News
The ''SoHo Weekly News'' (also called the ''SoHo News'') was a weekly alternative newspaper published in New York City from 1973 to 1982. The paper was founded in 1973 by Michael Goldstein (1938–2018).
History
The first issue was published on ...
''
* Madame Groeda Weyrd ''The Fantod Pack''
* Dewda Yorger "The Deary Rewdgo Series for Intrepid Young Ladies (D.R. on the Great Divide, D.R. in the Yukon, D.R. at Baffin Bay, etc.)"
* Garrod Weedy - ''The Pointless Book''
Legacy
Gorey has become an iconic figure in the
goth subculture. Events themed on his works and decorated in his characteristic style are common in the more
Victorian-styled elements of the subculture, notably the Edwardian 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 the
Edwardian
The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910 and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victori ...
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 is
Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler (born February 28, 1970) is an American author, musician, screenwriter, television writer, and television producer. He is best known for his children's book series ''A Series of Unfortunate Events'' and ''All the Wrong Questions ...
, who, under the pseudonym "Lemony Snicket", wrote the gothic children's book series ''
A Series of Unfortunate Events
''A Series of Unfortunate Events'' is a series of thirteen children's novels written by American author Daniel Handler under the pen name Lemony Snicket. The books follow the turbulent lives of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire. After th ...
''. Shortly before Gorey's death, Handler sent a copy of the series's 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."
Director
Mark Romanek
Mark Romanek (; born September 18, 1959) is an American filmmaker whose directing work includes feature films, television, music videos and commercials. Romanek wrote and directed the 2002 film ''One Hour Photo'' and directed the 2010 film '' Neve ...
's music video for the
Nine Inch Nails song "
The Perfect Drug" was designed specifically to resemble a Gorey book, with familiar Gorey elements including oversized urns,
topiary
Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants w ...
plants, and glum, pale characters in full Edwardian costume. Also,
Caitlín R. Kiernan has published a short story entitled "A Story for Edward Gorey" (''
Tales of Pain and Wonder
''Tales of Pain and Wonder'' is Caitlín R. Kiernan's first short story collection. The stories are interconnected to varying degrees, and a number of Kiernan's characters reappear throughout the book, particularly Jimmy DeSade and Salmagundi De ...
'', 2000), which features Gorey's black doll.
A more direct link to Gorey's influence on the music world is evident in ''The Gorey End'', an album recorded in 2003 by
The Tiger Lillies and the
Kronos Quartet
The Kronos Quartet is an American string quartet based in San Francisco. It has been in existence with a rotating membership of musicians for almost 50 years. The quartet covers a very broad range of musical genres, including contemporary classic ...
. 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
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
composer
Michael Mantler
Michael Mantler (born August 10, 1943) is an Austrian avant-garde jazz trumpeter and composer of contemporary music.
Career: United States
Mantler was born in Vienna, Austria. In the early 1960s, he was a student at the Academy of Music and V ...
recorded an album called ''The Hapless Child'' (Watt/ECM) with
Robert Wyatt,
Terje Rypdal
Terje Rypdal (born 23 August 1947) is a Norwegian guitarist and composer. He has been an important member in the Norwegian jazz community, and has also given show concerts with guitarists Ronni Le Tekrø and Mads Eriksen as "N3".
Career
Rypda ...
,
Carla Bley, and
Jack DeJohnette. It contains musical adaptations of ''The Sinking Spell'', ''The Object Lesson'', ''The Insect God'', ''The Doubtful Guest'', ''The Remembered Visit'', and ''The Hapless Child''. The last three songs also have been published on his 1987 ''Live'' album with
Jack Bruce
John Symon Asher Bruce (14 May 1943 – 25 October 2014) was a Scottish bassist, singer-songwriter, musician and composer. He gained popularity as the primary lead vocalist and bassist of British rock band Cream. After the group disband ...
,
Rick Fenn
Richard Fenn (born 23 May 1953) is an English rock guitarist. He has been a member of the band 10cc since 1976 and has also collaborated with Mike Oldfield, Rick Wakeman, Hollies singer Peter Howarth, and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason.
Hist ...
, and
Nick Mason.
The opening titles of the
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
series ''
Mystery!
''Mystery!'' (also written ''MYSTERY!'') is a television anthology series produced by WGBH Boston for PBS in the United States.
The series was created as a mystery, police and crime drama spin-off of the already established PBS show '' Master ...
'' are based on Gorey's art, in an animated sequence co-directed by
Derek Lamb
Derek Reginald Lamb (20 June 1936 – 5 November 2005) was a British animation filmmaker and producer. While serving as executive producer of the National Film Board of Canada's English Animation Studio from 1976 to 1982, he produced the Oscar-win ...
.
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 entitled ''Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey'' was released by author Karen Wilkin.
In 2007,
The Jim Henson Company
The Jim Henson Company (formerly known as Muppets, Inc., Henson Associates, Inc., and Jim Henson Productions, Inc.; commonly referred to as Henson) is an American entertainment company located in Los Angeles, California. The company is known for ...
announced plans to produce a feature film based on ''The Doubtful Guest'' to be directed by
Brad Peyton
Brad Peyton (born May 27, 1978) is a Canadian film director, writer, and producer, best known for directing the Dwayne Johnson star vehicles '' Journey 2: The Mysterious Island'' (2012), '' San Andreas'' (2015), and '' Rampage'' (2018) as well ...
. 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 by
Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment, Inc., formerly named Amblin Productions and Steven Spielberg Productions, is an American film production company founded by director and producer Steven Spielberg, and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marsha ...
.
The online journal ''Goreyesque'' publishes artwork, stories, and poems in the spirit of Edward Gorey's work. The journal is co-sponsored by the Department of Creative Writing at
Columbia College Chicago and
Loyola University Chicago. ''Goreyesque'' was launched in tandem with the Chicago debut of two Gorey collections: ''Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey'' and ''G is for Gorey''. The collections were shown at the
Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA) in Chicago, Illinois from February 15 to June 15, 2014. ''Goreyesque'' features the work of both emerging talents and seasoned professionals, such as writers
Sam Weller and
Joe Meno.
See also
Contemporary American cartoonists with similar
macabre
In works of art, the adjective macabre ( or ; ) means "having the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere". The macabre works to emphasize the details and symbols of death. The term also refers to works particularly gruesome in natu ...
style include:
*
Charles Addams
*
Gary Larson
Gary Larson (born August 14, 1950) is an American cartoonist, environmentalist, and former musician. He is the creator of ''The Far Side'', a single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to more than 1,900 newspapers for fif ...
*
Lorin Morgan-Richards
*
Gahan Wilson
Gahan Allen Wilson (February 18, 1930 – November 21, 2019) was an American author, cartoonist and illustrator known for his cartoons depicting horror-fantasy situations.
Biography
Wilson was born in Evanston, Illinois, and was inspired by th ...
References
Further reading
* ''G Is for Gorey—C Is for Chicago; The Collection of Thomas Michalak''. libguides.luc.edu.
* ''The World of Edward Gorey'',
Clifford Ross
Clifford Ross (born October 15, 1952) is an American artist who has worked in multiple forms of media, including sculpture, painting, photography and video. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the ...
and
Karen Wilkin
Karen Wilkin (born 1940) is a New York-based independent curator and art critic specializing in 20th-century modernism.
Biography
Educated at Barnard College (1962) and Columbia University, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbri ...
, Henry N. Abrams Inc., 1996 (). Interview and monograph.
* ''The Strange Case of Edward Gorey'',
Alexander Theroux
Alexander Louis Theroux (born 1939) is an American novelist and poet. He is known for his novel '' Darconville's Cat'' (1981), which was selected by Anthony Burgess for his book-length essay '' Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 ...
,
Fantagraphics Books, 2000 (). Biography and reminiscence by Theroux, a friend of Gorey. An expanded edition was published in 2011 ().
* ''The Gorey Details''. BBC Radio program compiled and presented by
Philip Glassborow
Philip Glassborow is a playwright, lyricist and composer who writes for theatre, radio and television. His best-known theatre musical is The Great Big Radio Show! (music and lyrics) with book in collaboration with Nick McIvor, which was premiered ...
, including interviews with Andreas Brown of the Gotham Book Mart, actor
Frank Langella
Frank A. Langella Jr. (; born January 1, 1938) is an American stage and film actor. He has won four Tony Awards: two for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his performance as Richard Nixon in Peter Morgan's '' Frost/Nixon'' and as André in Flor ...
(star of Gorey's Dracula on Broadway),
Alison Lurie, Alex Hand, Jack Braginton Smith,
Katherine Kellgren, and featuring
David Suchet as the voice of Gorey.
* "All the Gorey Details", ''The Independent'', by Philip Glassborow, May 2003.
* ''Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey'',
Mark Dery, Little, Brown, 2018 ().
Edward Gorey's Illustrated Covers for Literary Classics
External links
Official website of the Edward Gorey Charitable TrustOfficial website of the Edward Gorey House*
*
*
*
Edward Gorey Collectionat the
Harry Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...
Edward Gorey Collectionat the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress
* (and multiple pseudonyms, linked)
Andrew Alpern Collection of Edward Goreyat
Columbia University Libraries
Columbia University Libraries is the library system of Columbia University and one of the largest academic library systems in North America. With 15.0 million volumes and over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources ...
Mystery! Edward Gorey interviewfrom pbs.org
*
Book cover illustrationsat Edward Gorey Books (GoreyBooks.com)
''GOREY''documentary film (2022, forthcoming)
Edward Gorey Doubleday Anchor paperbacks 1953–1960*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gorey, Edward
1925 births
2000 deaths
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American short story writers
American cartoonists
American male novelists
American male short story writers
American surrealist artists
American surrealist writers
Artists from Chicago
Asexual men
Harvard Advocate alumni
LGBT people from Illinois
American LGBT writers
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
United States Army personnel of World War II
United States Army soldiers
World Fantasy Award-winning artists
Writers of Gothic fiction
Writers who illustrated their own writing
Francis W. Parker School (Chicago) alumni