The Darkly Funny World of Edward Gorey
Gilded Bats, Epiplectic Bicycles, and Other Macabre Oddities
Jun 28, 2009 Irene Tanner-Yuen
Edward Gorey (1925-2000) was an influential artist and writer best known for his quirky books, as well as illustrating books for writers such as mystery author Sarah Caudwell and children's author John Bellairs (The House With the Clock In Its Walls and many others). He also designed the classic title sequence for PBS series Mystery!. Offbeat, witty, and often macabre, Gorey's art bears his distinctive style: drawings are usually monochromatic with great detail and cross-hatching, and are accompanied with intricate hand-lettered text.
Perilous Childhood in Gorey's Work
He may have illustrated works by children's authors, but Gorey himself is not strictly a children's writer. One can be fooled by his nonsense verse: Gorey uses the form that others like Edward Lear ("The Owl and the Pussycat") made popular, although younger readers might find his images and themes disturbing. Consider a passage from The Fatal Lozenge (1960), which is one of Gorey's numerous abecediaries*:"The Proctor buys a pupil ices/And hopes the boy will not resist/When he attempts to practise vices/Few people even know exist."
Indeed, children in Gorey's works often wind up orphaned, mistreated, dead, or all three; even if they live in comfort, they are depicted against overwhelming landscapes or in large, lonely rooms. The Hapless Child (1982) tells the story of Charlotte Sophia, daughter of well-to-do parents. Through a series of ever more dire occurrences, the girl becomes orphaned and is forced to live in hardship and poverty. In one of Gorey's earlier stories, The Insect God (1963), Millicent Frastley's middle-class family is distraught after she is kidnapped in order to be part of a "ritual crime".
It thus seems natural that Gorey would re-imagine satirist Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales For Children, a book full of admonishments for naughty children. The book was re-published in 2002 with Gorey's illustrations, whose dark humour complements the incongruity of the tales' so-called morals: little Matilda tells lies and is burned to death, but Algernon, who almost shoots his sister with a loaded gun, receives a mere reprimand.
The Gothic and the Macabre
While employed at Doubleday, Gorey provided art for many books including Dracula. Gorey's style is particularly appropriate for horror and Gothic genres, e.g., the aforementioned Bellairs series. His influence can also be traced in the subject matter and artwork in the Lemony Snicket books, which parodies many literary conventions, including the Gothic. Gorey's style is most significantly a forebear of Tim Burton's aesthetic, especially as shown in the design of his stop-motion films The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. Burton even published a book of nonsense verse called The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy (2002), complete with line drawings of sad, large-eyed children.
Gorey's work is an homage to Gothic conventions, but it also pokes gentle fun at the genre's significant themes. Stormy weather, supernatural horror or mystery, and premature death are often part of Gorey's stories. Characters suffer from stereotypically Gothic afflictions such as loneliness and melancholy. Pictures are populated with Edwardian-era gentry, upon whom the most terrible misfortunes fall. In Gorey's world, that can mean anything from languishing in a chaise longue to being impaled unexpectedly.
Arguably the most famous of all Gorey's creations is the morbid little book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies: or, After the Outing (1963). The book is not intended for the very young, although older children may enjoy it with the spirit of dark humour in which it is written. Each letter in this abecediary is written up in typical deadpan fashion and illustrated by the improbable, often frightful death of a child: "K is for Kate who was struck with an axe" is accompanied with one of the book's more violent images, and "T is for Titus who flew into bits" shows the boy about to unravel a parcel tied up with string.
Amphigorey: An Ideal Introduction to Edward Gorey
Newcomers to Gorey's work would do well to start with Amphigorey, an anthology of fifteen of Gorey's best books. The anthology showcases Gorey's inimitable style, as well as other trademarks such as lingustic playfulness (Ogdred Weary is a character name as well as an anagram of Gorey's own name; Peevish Gorge, le Crapaud Bleu, and Sogmush River a few examples of his invented place names), characters in Edwardian dress, and stories of death and danger.
The following is a 'top five' list of Gorey's best work; all except for the Bellairs books are anthologised in Amphigorey:
- The West Wing (1963) - This book lacks text, but it doesn't need it. Instead, it has thirty eerie drawings of different rooms shown from various perspectives. Each picture is mysterious and evocative: one shows a rolled-up rug against a wall, another is empty except for three shoes.
- The Gashlycrumb Tinies - Gorey's best-known work.
- Illustrations for books by John Bellairs - The covers and drawings are suitably creepy for these classic horror novels.
- The Remembered Visit (1965) - Bored girl Drusilla forgets to fulfill a certain promise. Surprisingly, the ending is bittersweet rather than morbid.
- The Haunted Tea-Cosy (1998) - Published shortly before Gorey's death, this book is an eccentric re-imagining of A Christmas Carol.
*Abecediary: A book in which text and pictures are used to illustrate each letter of the alphabet.
Image from The Hapless Child by Edward Gorey
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From Cautionary Tales For Children by Belloc/Gorey
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Image from The Remembered Visit by Edward Gorey
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Image from The West Wing by Edward Gorey
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Image from The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey
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