Edward Gorey
Encyclopedia
Edward St. John Gorey was an American writer and artist noted for his macabre illustrated books.
. His parents, Helen Dunham (née Garvey) and Edward Lee Gorey, divorced in 1936 when he was 11, then remarried in 1952 when he was 27. One of his stepmothers was Corinna Mura
(1909–65), a cabaret singer who had a small role in the classic film Casablanca
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 popular 19th century greeting card
writer and artist, from whom he claimed to have inherited his talents.
Gorey attended a variety of local grade schools and then the Francis W. Parker School
. He spent 1944 to 1946 in the Army
at Dugway Proving Ground
in Utah
, and then attended Harvard University
from 1946 to 1950, where he studied French
and roomed with poet Frank O'Hara
.
He frequently stated that his formal art training was "negligible"; Gorey studied art for one semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1943.
and worked for the Art Department of Doubleday Anchor, illustrating book covers and in some cases adding illustrations to the text. He illustrated works as diverse as Dracula
by Bram Stoker
, The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
by T. S. Eliot
. In later years he produced cover illustrations and interior artwork for many children's books by John Bellairs
, as well as books begun by Bellairs and continued by Brad Strickland
after Bellairs' death.
His first independent work, The Unstrung Harp, was published in 1953. He also published under pen names that were anagram
s of his first and last names, such as Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde, Ms. Regera Dowdy, and dozens more. His books also feature the names Eduard Blutig ("Edward Gory"), a German language
pun
on his own name, and O. Müde (German for O. Weary).
The New York Times credits bookstore owner Andreas Brown and his store, the Gotham 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."
Gorey's illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and ostensibly Victorian
and Edwardian
settings, have long had a cult following
. Gorey became particularly well-known through his animated introduction to the PBS
series Mystery!
in 1980, as well as his designs for the 1977 Broadway
production of Dracula, for which he won a Tony Award
for Best Costume Design. (He was also nominated for Best Scenic Design.)
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 in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts
, on Cape Cod
, where he wrote and directed numerous evening-length entertainments, often featuring his own papier-mâché
puppets, an ensemble known as Le Theatricule Stoique. The first of these productions, Lost Shoelaces, premiered in Woods Hole, Massachusetts
on August 13, 1987. The last was "The White Canoe: an Opera Seria for Hand Puppets," for which Gorey wrote the libretto, with a score by the composer Daniel Wolf
. Based on Thomas Moore's poem "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," the opera was staged after Gorey's death and directed by his friend, neighbor, and longtime collaborator Carol Verburg, with a puppet stage made by his friends and neighbors the noted set designers Herbert Senn and Helen Pond. In the early 1970s, Gorey wrote an unproduced screenplay for a silent film
, The Black Doll.
Gorey was noted for his fondness for ballet (for many years, he religiously attended all performances of the New York City Ballet
), fur coats, tennis shoes, and cat
s, of which he had many. All figure prominently in his work. His knowledge of literature and films was unusually extensive, and in his interviews, he named Jane Austen
, Agatha Christie
, Francis Bacon, George Balanchine
, Balthus
, Louis Feuillade
, Ronald Firbank
, Lady Murasaki Shikibu
, Robert Musil
, Yasujiro Ozu
, Anthony Trollope
, and Johannes Vermeer
as some of his favorite artists. Gorey was also an unashamed pop-culture junkie, avidly following soap operas and TV comedies like Petticoat Junction
and Cheers
, and he had particular affection for dark genre series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman: The Animated Series
and The X-Files
; he once told an interviewer that he so enjoyed the Batman series that it was influencing the visual style of one of his upcoming books. Gorey treated TV commercials as an art form in themselves, even taping his favorites for later study. Gorey was especially fond of movies, and for a time he wrote regular reviews for the Soho Weekly under the pseudonym Wardore Edgy.
After Gorey's death, one of his executors, Andreas Brown, turned up a large cache of unpublished work, some completed, some incomplete. Brown described the find as "Ample material for many future books and for plays based on his work."
reported that when Gorey was pressed on the matter of his sexual orientation
, he said that even he was not sure whether he was gay
or straight
. When asked what his sexual preferences were in an interview, he said,
Edward Gorey agreed in an interview that the "sexlessness" of his novels was a product of his asexuality
.
From 1996 to his death in April 2000, the normally reclusive artist was the subject of a direct cinema-style documentary
directed by Christopher Seufert
. (As of 2011, the film and accompanying book have not been released.) He was interviewed on Tribute To Edward Gorey, an hour long community Public-access television
cable show produced by artist and friend Joyce Kenney. He contributed his videos and personal thoughts. Edward served as judge in Yarmouth art shows and enjoyed activities at the local cable station, studying computer art and serving as cameraman on many Yarmouth shows. His Cape Cod house is called Elephant House
and is the subject of a photography book titled Elephant House: Or, the Home of Edward Gorey, with photographs and text by Kevin McDermott. The house is now the Edward Gorey House Museum.
Gorey left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust benefiting cats and dogs, as well as other species including bats and insects.
. His books can be found in the humor and cartoon sections of major bookstores, but books like The Object Lesson have earned serious critical respect as works of surrealist art. His experimentations — 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 Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe
, "Ideally, if anything [was] any good, it would be indescribable." Gorey classified his own work as literary nonsense
, the genre made most famous by Lewis Carroll
and Edward Lear
.
In response to being called gothic
, 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. As Schubert
said, there is no happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy nonsense, either."
s. He wrote many of his books under pseudonym
s that were usually anagrams of his own name (most famously Ogdred Weary). Some of these 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 were purportedly translated) for "bloody," which is a synonym for "gory."
. 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 period of history than to Gorey himself, whose characters are depicted as wearing fashion styles ranging from those of the mid-19th century to the 1930s.
Director Mark Romanek
's music video
for the Nine Inch Nails
song "The Perfect Drug
" was designed specifically to look like a Gorey book, with familiar Gorey elements including oversized urns, topiary
plants, and glum, pale characters in full Edwardian costume. Also, Caitlín R. Kiernan
has published a short story titled "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 in The Gorey End, an album recorded in 2003 by the Tiger Lillies
and the Kronos 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 work, which were then adapted and turned into songs. Gorey died before hearing the finished album.
In 1976 jazz
composer Michael Mantler
recorded an album called The Hapless Child (Watt/ECM) with Robert Wyatt
, Terje Rypdal
, 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 three last songs have also been published on his 1987 Live album with Jack Bruce
, Rick Fenn
and Nick Mason
.
The opening titles of the PBS
series Mystery!
is based on Gorey's art, in an animated sequence co-directed by Derek 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
.
The Jim Henson Company
announced plans to produce a feature film based on The Doubtful Guest to be directed by Brad Peyton. The release date is unknown. There has not been much information since the announcement in 2007.
Early life
Edward St. John Gorey was born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. His parents, Helen Dunham (née Garvey) and Edward Lee Gorey, divorced in 1936 when he was 11, then remarried in 1952 when he was 27. One of his stepmothers was Corinna Mura
Corinna Mura
Corinna Mura was a cabaret singer and diseuse. She had a small role in the classic film Casablanca as the woman playing the guitar while singing "La Marseillaise" at Rick's Café Américain....
(1909–65), a cabaret singer who had a small role in the classic film Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
as the woman playing the guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
while singing "La Marseillaise
La Marseillaise
"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song, originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. The French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795...
" at Rick's Café Américain. His father was briefly a journalist. Gorey's maternal great-grandmother, Helen St. John Garvey, was a popular 19th century greeting card
Greeting card
A greeting card is an illustrated, folded card featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas or other holidays, they are also sent to convey thanks or express other feeling. Greeting cards,...
writer and artist, from whom he claimed to have inherited his talents.
Gorey attended a variety of local grade schools and then the Francis W. Parker School
Francis W. Parker School (Chicago)
Francis W. Parker School is an independent day school serving students from junior kindergarten through grade twelve of high school. Located in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, the school is based on the progressive educational philosophies of John Dewey and Colonel Francis Wayland Parker,...
. He spent 1944 to 1946 in the Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
at Dugway Proving Ground
Dugway Proving Ground
Dugway Proving Ground is a US Army facility located approximately 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah in southern Tooele County and just north of Juab County...
in Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
, and then attended Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
from 1946 to 1950, where he studied French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and roomed with poet Frank O'Hara
Frank O'Hara
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...
.
He frequently stated that his formal art training was "negligible"; Gorey studied art for one semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1943.
Career
From 1953 to 1960, he lived in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and worked for the Art Department of Doubleday Anchor, illustrating book covers and in some cases adding illustrations to the text. He illustrated works as diverse as Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
by Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...
, The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It is the basis for the record-setting musical Cats....
by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
. In later years he produced cover illustrations and interior artwork for many children's books by John Bellairs
John Bellairs
John Anthony Bellairs was an American author, best known for his well-respected fantasy novel The Face in the Frost as well as many gothic mystery novels for young adults featuring Lewis Barnavelt, Anthony Monday, and Johnny Dixon.-Biography:After earning degrees at University of Notre Dame and...
, as well as books begun by Bellairs and continued by Brad Strickland
Brad Strickland
William Bradley Strickland is an American author known primarily for his fantasy and science fiction. He was born in New Holland, Georgia....
after Bellairs' death.
His first independent work, The Unstrung Harp, was published in 1953. He also published under pen names that were anagram
Anagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
s of his first and last names, such as Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde, Ms. Regera Dowdy, and dozens more. His books also feature the names Eduard Blutig ("Edward Gory"), a German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
on his own name, and O. Müde (German for O. Weary).
The New York Times credits bookstore owner Andreas Brown and his store, the Gotham Book Mart
Gotham Book Mart
The Gotham Book Mart, in operation from 1920 to 2007, was a famous midtown Manhattan bookstore and cultural landmark. The business was located first in a small basement space on West 45th Street near the Theater District, it then moved to 51 West 47th Street, then spent many years at 41 West 47th...
, 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."
Gorey's illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and ostensibly Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
and Edwardian
Edwardian period
The Edwardian era or Edwardian period in the United Kingdom is the period covering the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910.The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 and the succession of her son Edward marked the end of the Victorian era...
settings, have long had a cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
. Gorey became particularly well-known through his animated introduction to the PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
series Mystery!
Mystery!
Mystery! is an episodic television series that debuted in 1980 in the USA. It airs on PBS and is produced by WGBH...
in 1980, as well as his designs for the 1977 Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
production of Dracula, for which he won a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for Best Costume Design. (He was also nominated for Best Scenic Design.)
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
; in fact, he only left the U.S. once, for a visit to the Scottish Hebrides. In later years, he lived year-round in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts
Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts
Yarmouth Port is a census-designated place in the town of Yarmouth in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 5,395 at the 2000 census...
, on Cape Cod
Cape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
, where he wrote and directed numerous evening-length entertainments, often featuring his own papier-mâché
Papier-mâché
Papier-mâché , alternatively, paper-mache, is a composite material consisting of paper pieces or pulp, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive, such as glue, starch, or wallpaper paste....
puppets, an ensemble known as Le Theatricule Stoique. The first of these productions, Lost Shoelaces, premiered in Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Woods Hole is a census-designated place in the town of Falmouth in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. It lies at the extreme southwest corner of Cape Cod, near Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands...
on August 13, 1987. The last was "The White Canoe: an Opera Seria for Hand Puppets," for which Gorey wrote the libretto, with a score by the composer Daniel Wolf
Daniel Wolf
Daniel Wolf is an Austrian association footballer who plays for SC Wiener Neustadt.-External links:*...
. Based on Thomas Moore's poem "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," the opera was staged after Gorey's death and directed by his friend, neighbor, and longtime collaborator Carol Verburg, with a puppet stage made by his friends and neighbors the noted set designers Herbert Senn and Helen Pond. In the early 1970s, Gorey wrote an unproduced screenplay for a silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
, The Black Doll.
Gorey was noted for his fondness for ballet (for many years, he religiously attended all performances of the New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Leon Barzin was the company's first music director. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company...
), fur coats, tennis shoes, and cat
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
s, of which he had many. All figure prominently in his work. His knowledge of literature and films was unusually extensive, and in his interviews, he named Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
, Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
, Francis Bacon, George Balanchine
George Balanchine
George Balanchine , born Giorgi Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was one of the 20th century's most famous choreographers, a developer of ballet in the United States, co-founder and balletmaster of New York City Ballet...
, Balthus
Balthus
Balthasar Klossowski de Rola , best known as Balthus, was an esteemed but controversial Polish-French modern artist....
, Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade was a prolific and prominent French film director from the silent era. Between 1906 and 1924 he directed over 630 films...
, Ronald Firbank
Ronald Firbank
Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was a British novelist.-Biography:Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907...
, Lady Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012...
, Robert Musil
Robert Musil
Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...
, Yasujiro Ozu
Yasujiro Ozu
was a prominent Japanese film director and script writer. He is known for his distinctive technical style, developed during the silent era. Marriage and family, especially the relationships between the generations, are among the most persistent themes in his body of work...
, Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...
, and Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...
as some of his favorite artists. Gorey was also an unashamed pop-culture junkie, avidly following soap operas and TV comedies like Petticoat Junction
Petticoat Junction
Petticoat Junction is an American situation comedy produced by Filmways which originally aired on CBS from 1963 to 1970. The series is one of three interrelated shows about rural characters created by Paul Henning; the others are The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres.The setting for the series...
and Cheers
Cheers
Cheers is an American situation comedy television series that ran for 11 seasons from 1982 to 1993. It was produced by Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions, in association with Paramount Network Television for NBC, and was created by the team of James Burrows, Glen Charles, and Les Charles...
, and he had particular affection for dark genre series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series is an American animated series based on the DC Comics character Batman. The series featured an ensemble cast of many voice-actors including Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Arleen Sorkin, and Loren Lester. The series won four Emmy Awards and was nominated...
and The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
; he once told an interviewer that he so enjoyed the Batman series that it was influencing the visual style of one of his upcoming books. Gorey treated TV commercials as an art form in themselves, even taping his favorites for later study. Gorey was especially fond of movies, and for a time he wrote regular reviews for the Soho Weekly under the pseudonym Wardore Edgy.
After Gorey's death, one of his executors, Andreas Brown, turned up a large cache of unpublished work, some completed, some incomplete. Brown described the find as "Ample material for many future books and for plays based on his work."
Personal life
Although Gorey's books were popular with children, he did not associate with children much and had no particular fondness for them. Gorey never married, professed to have little interest in romance, and never discussed any specific romantic relationships in interviews. In the book The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, published after Gorey's death, his friend Alexander TherouxAlexander Theroux
Alexander Theroux is an American novelist, poet, and essayist.He was born in Medford, Massachusetts. His brother is Paul Theroux. He studied at Harvard University and Yale University...
reported that when Gorey was pressed on the matter of his sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
, he said that even he was not sure whether he was gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
or straight
Heterosexuality
Heterosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, physical or romantic attractions to persons of the opposite sex";...
. When asked what his sexual preferences were in an interview, he said,
I'm neither one thing nor the other particularly. I am fortunate in that I am apparently reasonably undersexed or something...I've never said that I was gay and I've never said that I wasn't...what I'm trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else....
Edward Gorey agreed in an interview that the "sexlessness" of his novels was a product of his asexuality
Asexuality
Asexuality , in its broadest sense, is the lack of sexual attraction and, in some cases, the lack of interest in sex. Sometimes, it is considered a lack of a sexual orientation...
.
From 1996 to his death in April 2000, the normally reclusive artist was the subject of a direct cinema-style documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
directed by Christopher Seufert
Christopher Seufert
Christopher Seufert is a documentary film producer and director, and photographer based in Boston, Massachusetts. His production company is Mooncusser Films....
. (As of 2011, the film and accompanying book have not been released.) He was interviewed on Tribute To Edward Gorey, an hour long community Public-access television
Public-access television
Public-access television is a form of non-commercial mass media where ordinary people can create content television programming which is cablecast through cable TV specialty channels...
cable show produced by artist and friend Joyce Kenney. He contributed his videos and personal thoughts. Edward served as judge in Yarmouth art shows and enjoyed activities at the local cable station, studying computer art and serving as cameraman on many Yarmouth shows. His Cape Cod house is called Elephant House
Elephant House
Elephant House, also known as the Edward Gorey House, is the home on Cape Cod that Edward Gorey, author, illustrator, puppeteer and playwright, lived and worked in when he left New York City....
and is the subject of a photography book titled Elephant House: Or, the Home of Edward Gorey, with photographs and text by Kevin McDermott. The house is now the Edward Gorey House Museum.
Gorey left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust benefiting cats and dogs, as well as other species including bats and insects.
Style
Gorey is typically described as an illustratorIllustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
. His books can be found in the humor and cartoon sections of major bookstores, but books like The Object Lesson have earned serious critical respect as works of surrealist art. His experimentations — 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 Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
, "Ideally, if anything [was] any good, it would be indescribable." Gorey classified his own work as literary nonsense
Literary nonsense
Literary nonsense is a broad categorization of literature that uses sensical and nonsensical elements to defy language conventions or logical reasoning...
, the genre made most famous by Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
and Edward Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
.
In response to being called gothic
Gothic (term)
Gothic is the term originally used to describe things pertaining to the Gothic people and then reused in a variety of contexts.The Goths were traditionally thought to have originated in northern Europe and moved south towards the borders of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century...
, 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. As Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
said, there is no happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy nonsense, either."
Pseudonyms
Gorey was very fond of word games, particularly anagramAnagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
s. He wrote many of his books under pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s that were usually anagrams of his own name (most famously Ogdred Weary). Some of these 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 were purportedly translated) for "bloody," which is a synonym for "gory."
- Ogdred Weary - The Curious Sofa, The Beastly Baby
- Mrs. Regera Dowdy - The Pious Infant
- 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
- D. Awdrey-Gore - The Toastrack Enigma, The Blancmange Tragedy, The Postcard Mystery, The Pincushion Affair, The Toothpaste Murder, The Dustwrapper Secret (Note: These books, although attributed to Awdrey-Gore in Gorey's book The Awdrey-Gore Legacy, were not really written.)
- Edward Pig - The Untitled Book
- Wardore Edgy
- Madame Groeda Weyrd - The Fantod Deck
Legacy
Gorey has become an iconic figure in the Goth subcultureGoth subculture
The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in England during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify...
. Events themed on his works and decorated in his characteristic style are common in the more Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
-styled elements of the subculture, notably the Edwardian costume balls held annually in San Francisco and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, which include performances based on his works. The "Edwardian" in this case refers less to the Edwardian period of history than to Gorey himself, whose characters are depicted as wearing fashion styles ranging from those of the mid-19th century to the 1930s.
Director Mark Romanek
Mark Romanek
Mark Romanek is an American filmmaker, whose directing work includes feature films, music videos and commercials.He wrote and directed the critically acclaimed 2002 film One Hour Photo starring Robin Williams...
's music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
for the Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
song "The Perfect Drug
The Perfect Drug
"The Perfect Drug" or ' is a song by Nine Inch Nails. It was written for the David Lynch film Lost Highway and originally appeared on the Lost Highway soundtrack and as a single from the score in 1997...
" was designed specifically to look like a Gorey book, with familiar Gorey elements including oversized urns, topiary
Topiary
Topiary is the horticultural practice of training live perennial plants, by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, perhaps geometric or fanciful; and the term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. It can be...
plants, and glum, pale characters in full Edwardian costume. Also, Caitlín R. Kiernan
Caitlin R. Kiernan
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is the author of many science fiction and dark fantasy works, including seven novels, many comic books, more than one hundred published short stories, novellas, and vignettes, and numerous scientific papers.- Overview :Born in Dublin, Ireland, she moved to the United States...
has published a short story titled "A Story for Edward Gorey" (Tales of Pain and Wonder
Tales of Pain and Wonder
Tales of Pain and Wonder is Caitlin 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 Desvernine...
, 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
Tiger Lillies
The Tiger Lillies are a three-piece band, formed in 1989 and based in London. They have toured worldwide and won acclaim with their opera Shockheaded Peter....
and the Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
. 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 work, which were then adapted and turned into songs. Gorey died before hearing the finished album.
In 1976 jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
composer Michael Mantler
Michael Mantler
Michael Mantler is a composer and trumpeter in new jazz and contemporary music.-Career: United States:Mantler was born in Vienna, Austria...
recorded an album called The Hapless Child (Watt/ECM) with Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt is an English musician, and founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine, with a long and distinguished solo career...
, Terje Rypdal
Terje Rypdal
Terje Rypdal is a Norwegian guitarist and composer. Most of his music has been released on albums of the German record label ECM. Rypdal has collaborated both as a guitarist and as a composer with other ECM artists such as Ketil Bjørnstad and David Darling...
, Carla Bley
Carla Bley
Carla Bley, née Borg, is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and band leader. An important figure in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator Over The Hill , as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other...
and Jack DeJohnette
Jack DeJohnette
Jack DeJohnette is an American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer. He is one of the most influential jazz drummers of the 20th century, due to extensive work as leader and sideman for musicians like Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett and Sonny...
. 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 three last songs have also been published on his 1987 Live album with Jack Bruce
Jack Bruce
John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce is a Scottish musician and songwriter, respected as a founding member of the British psychedelic rock power trio, Cream, for a solo career that spans several decades, and for his participation in several well-known musical ensembles...
, Rick Fenn
Rick Fenn
Richard 'Rick' Fenn is an English rock guitarist. He is best known for being a member of the band 10cc since 1976. He has also collaborated with Mike Oldfield, Rick Wakeman, Hollies singer Peter Howarth and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason....
and Nick Mason
Nick Mason
Nicholas Berkeley "Nick" Mason is an English drummer and songwriter, best known for his work with Pink Floyd. He was the only constant member of the band since its formation in 1965...
.
The opening titles of the PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
series Mystery!
Mystery!
Mystery! is an episodic television series that debuted in 1980 in the USA. It airs on PBS and is produced by WGBH...
is based on Gorey's art, in an animated sequence co-directed by Derek Lamb
Derek Lamb
Derek Lamb was an 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-winner Special Delivery, directed by John Weldon and Eunice Macaulay, and produced and scripted Eugene...
.
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
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
The Jim Henson Company
Jim Henson
James Maury "Jim" Henson was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for...
announced plans to produce a feature film based on The Doubtful Guest to be directed by Brad Peyton. The release date is unknown. There has not been much information since the announcement in 2007.
See also
- Charles AddamsCharles AddamsCharles "Chas" Samuel Addams was an American cartoonist known for his particularly black humor and macabre characters...
, contemporary American cartoonist with similar macabre style
External links
- Edward Gorey House Official Site of the Edward Gorey House and Gorey Trust
- Mystery! Edward Gorey interview from pbs.org
- Selected Gorey works from lunaea.com
- Edward Gorey in WorldCat Identities
- Elephant House: The Edward Gorey House contents photographed after his death by Kevin McDermott
- Edward Gorey Documentary Clips
- Edward Gorey Bibliography
- Edward Gorey showcase Gorey fan site
- Goreyography All about Gorey
- Edward Gorey Book Covers
- Costume design from Dracula in Swann Galleries Auction catalogue
- Edward Gorey Doubleday Anchor paperbacks