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Edward Gorey

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by
kathycf
, 05-09-2007 at 06:14 PM (6204 Views)
I have always liked the very macabre, ghoulishly funny works of Edward Gorey. He wrote and illustrated several books, but I think one of my favorites is The Gashlycrumb Tinies. It details the sad fates of 26 children who all come to a bad end...a very bad end. Here is a little sample...


B is for Basil assaulted by bears.


D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh


F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech.



G is for George smothered under a rug



Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.

You can read the story and see the ilustrations here: Gashlycrumb Tinies.

Goreyography

Salon.com on Gorey
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Comments

  1. andave_ya's Avatar
    wow! very interesting. I knew about the skeleton holding the umbrella over the children pic, but an entire alphabet! That's something for Halloween!
  2. mtpspur's Avatar
    Wow and hear I thought Lemoney Snickett was an original.
  3. kiz_paws's Avatar
    Copyright 1962?? Woot, wonder what they thought of this kind of stuff back then, lol! Things have certainly changed, methinks!
  4. kathycf's Avatar
    adya, I think the skeleton (death with an umbrella) picture is featured on the cover of the book.

    mtpspur, I haven't read Lemoney, but I hear it is dark and morbid. Perhaps the author was a Gorey fan?

    kiz, Gorey's books did cause quite a stir back "in the day". And I think your correct, attitudes have changed a bit. This is a little blurb from the Salon article.
    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.

    Gorey's work was not at first met with open arms by the publishing world -- to put it mildly. Today, however, with his cult of devotees numbering in the millions, his first efforts are collected in three bestselling anthologies: "Amphigorey," "Amphigorey, Too" and "Amphigorey Also." And Harcourt Brace, a longtime publisher of Gorey's work, has recently reissued many of his early books, including his first, "The Unstrung Harp" (1953),
  5. mtpspur's Avatar
    Got me on Gorey. Amazed I missed these--I would have eaten them up in the day. Snickett is morbid but if read with an eye for biting satire and overblown dynamics it's like reading Saki or Ambrose Bierce. Read the first chapters book one only and decided I had enough darkness in my library and made the mistake of giving book to oldest son who does not do drama queen half as charming as I and he adored it and wants the others.. Me like Batman--he likes Spawn--pretty much shows the differences in us. Charles Addams (he of the Addams Family cartoons would have liked him.