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Edward Gorey was an American artist, writer, and illustrator known for his gothic style. He was born in Chicago in 1925, served in World War II, and lived in New York City before moving to Cape Cod until his death in 2000. He created over 100 books, often featuring macabre and tongue-in-cheek illustrations, and was popular with the gothic community. His home, Elephant House, is now a museum that supports animal welfare causes.
Edward Gorey was a prolific American artist, writer and illustrator. Although many people have the misconception that he was British, due to the style and themes of his work, he was actually born in Chicago in 1925 and only traveled outside the United States once in his lifetime. Edward Gorey died in Massachusetts in 2000 at the age of 75 of a heart attack. Edward Gorey’s pen and ink illustrations have a distinctive and unmistakable gothic style, and many of his books have been published worldwide.
Edward Gorey spent his childhood in Chicago and attended the Chicago School of Art for one semester before enlisting in the Army for World War II. He spent his war years working as a clerk at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, where the Army tested mortars and poison gas. After the war, he enrolled at Harvard to study French literature, where he spent much time with Frank O’Hara, a well-known poet.
Edward Gorey spent the years between graduating in 1950 and 1983 in New York City, where he found work as an illustrator for Doubleday Anchor. He has illustrated a wide variety of book covers and interiors, including works by TS Eliot, John Bellairs, Saki, Muriel Spark, Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker and HG Wells. During this period, she also began drawing and illustrating small chapbooks of him, relentlessly submitting them to publishers seeking a wider audience.
Edward Gorey also contributed to the field of production design, visualizing sets and costumes for a 1977 Tony Award-winning production of Dracula. He also wrote plays, designed fantastic papier-mâché puppets and composed the libretto for The White Canoe. He has turned into a memorable figure in New York City, often seen wearing tennis shoes and voluminous fur coats like those worn by the characters in his books. He was also an ardent ballet fan, rarely missing a performance by the New York City Ballet.
A highly eccentric and somewhat reclusive man, though seemingly amiable to strangers, Edward Gorey left New York in 1983 for Cape Cod, where he lived until his death. He shared his home, Elephant House, with a flock of cats and an assortment of plants. Elephant House has since been turned into a museum, called Gorey House, where visitors can examine the environment in which he lived and worked for 17 years. Edward Gorey is well remembered for his commitment to animal welfare causes and Gorey House to this day makes donations to animal causes and participates in animal welfare education.
Edward Gorey has created over 100 books, in a style that defies boundaries and descriptions. His illustrations tend to be finely detailed, macabre, and tongue-in-cheek, along with his text. Some of his books contained no writing at all, just a series of sometimes disturbing illustrations.
Edward Gorey also wrote under a variety of pseudonyms created by anagrams of his name, such as Ogdred Weary. Many of his characters have found themselves in unpleasant and uncomfortable situations, which were brilliantly illustrated in a way that let the imagination run wild. Cats were frequent subjects of his books and can be found lurking in the corners of many of Edward Gorey’s illustrations.
Edward Gorey’s books were often set in the Victorian and Edwardian eras and usually took place in England, although some had more ambiguous locations. As a result, Edward Gorey is quite popular with the gothic community, which is fascinated by the Victorian macabre.
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