Edward Gorey was probably best known as an author and illustrator of more than 100 books in his lifetime. Collector's items today, his books have become icons in and of themselves, darkly humorous and humorously dark. The books defied genres and publishers sometimes had a hard time determining how to market them. They were illustrated yes, but the dark and sometimes gruesome tales certainly weren’t children's books. This contribution was undoubtedly significant, but this was not the limit of his career, which included designing book covers, sets, and costumes for theater and ballet (including the Tony award-winning designs for Dracula in 1977), and the illustrations for animations for the PBS Mystery! series, a shortened version of which can still be seen today. Gorey’s book cover designs are often identifiable by his hand-lettered titles, which he claims he did because he didn’t know much about type. Additionally, Gorey was an icon of fashion in the New York scene, he and his extensive collection of fur coats were the subjects of multiple articles on the New York Fashion scene. Yet despite his numerous contributions, he is not mentioned in design or illustration history books, is his absence from the design history canon a result of gatekeeping? Was it because he mostly designed book covers for inexpensive paperback books rather than glamorous hardcovers? Or Possibly because his own work was described by critics as “macabre”, “gothic”, or even “campy”. Or was it because of his association with the LGBT community? Many have speculated about his sexual orientation, even though Gorey was not “out” and he preferred ambiguity only going so far as to admit to an interviewer that he supposed he was gay, but didn’t “identify with it much”.

TIMELINE

1925 – b Chicago, Illinois, as Edward St. John Gorey
1942 – was accepted to Harvard
1942 – Drafted into the Army, served stateside during WWII at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, deferred college entrance
1946 – Begins at Harvard, education is paid for by the G.I. Bill, majoring in French Literature
1953– Hired at Anchor /Doubleday as a book cover designer, moves to NYC
1953 – Publishes first book of his own, The Unstrung Harp
1962 – Founds the Fantod Press to publish his own books
1962-63 – Hired as an art director at Bobbs-Merrill, publisher
1963 – Begins working as a Freelance book designer and illustrator, begins living part-time at the cape
1963 – Publishes abecedary, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, along with The Insect God and The West Wing
1977 – Designs sets and costumes for Broadway revival of Dracula, wins a Tony award for both
1980 – Creates illustrations for animated introduction to PBS Mystery!
1983 – Resolves to leave the city (NYC), moves permanently and full-time to the Cape
2000 – d Gorey dies at age 75
2002 – Edward Gorey’s home at the cape becomes a museum, The Edward Gorey House

REFERENCES

Borrelli-Persson, L. (2021, October 30). Celebrating Edward Gorey, Style Icon. Vogue. https://www.vogue.com/article/celebrating-edward-gorey-style-icon

Brottman, M. (2005) High theory/low culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Curwen, T. (2004, Jul 18). ART; light from a dark star; before the current rise of graphic novels, there was Edward Gorey, whose tales and drawings still baffle -- and attract -- new fans.: [HOME EDITION]. Los Angeles Times Retrieved from https://libproxy.uco.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.libproxy.uco.edu/newspapers/art-light-dark-star-before-current-rise-graphic/docview/422042911/se-2?accountid=14516

Dery, M. (2018). Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey (Illustrated ed.). Little, Brown and Company.

Dery, M. (2020, January-February). Edward Gorey's Gothic Nonsense. The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, 27(1), 18+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A616752005/LitRC?u=edmo56673&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=f73cab8e

Devers, A. N. (2011, January 5). The Coats of Edward Gorey. The Paris Review. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/01/04/the-coats-of-edward-gorey/

Dubner, S. (2022, May 20). The University of Impossible-to-Get-Into. Freakonomics. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-university-of-impossible-to-get-into/

Gottlieb, R. (2018, December 31). Superb Oddities: Robert Gottlieb Reviews a Biography of Edward Gorey. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/books/review/edward-gorey-mark-dery-born-to-be-posthumous.html

Green, J. (2020, April 1). The Gay History of America’s Classic Children’s Books. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/t-magazine/gay-children-book-authors.html

Gussow, M. (2000, April 17). Edward Gorey, Artist and Author Who Turned the Macabre Into a Career, Dies at 75. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/17/arts/edward-gorey-artist-and-author-who-turned-the-macabre-into-a-career-dies-at-75.html

Heller. (1999). “Book Covers, Edward Gorey”. Design Literacy (continued) : understanding graphic design.

Heller, S. (1999, Jan 06). Edward Gorey's cover story: [toronto edition]. National Post Retrieved from https://libproxy.uco.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/edward-goreys-cover-story/docview/329355783/se-2?accountid=14516

Kurutz, S. (2018, November 1). The Granddaddy of Goth. New York Times, D1(L). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A560663228/OVIC?u=edmo56673&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=4e2ba0c0

Myers, Q. (2020, March 30). Why Did We Grow Up Thinking a Piercing in the Right Ear Was Gay? MEL Magazine. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/gay-piercing-right-ear-left-ear-history

Nadel, A. (2019). The Lavender Scare. The Journal of American History (Bloomington, Ind.), 106(3), 845–847. https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaz663

Petermann, E. (2018). The child's death as punishment or nonsense? Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" (1963) and the cautionary verse tradition. Bookbird, 56(4), 22. doi:https://doi.org/10.1353/bkb.2018.0062

Schneider, R. (2020). Start of a Decade: "Camp Leaders" The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, 27(1), 4–4.

Seufert, C. [Christopher Seufert]. (2020, May 8). Dick Cavett Interviews Edward Gorey, Nov. 30, 1977 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cng3K8FGj28

Sontag, S. (2018). Notes on Camp. Penguin Classics.

Sontag, S. (2018). One Culture and The New Sensibility. In Notes On Camp (pp. 34–55). Penguin Classics.

Spark Admissions. (2021, June 8). Exploring Ivy League Acceptance Rates. https://www.sparkadmissions.com/blog/ivy-league-acceptance-rates-just-how-hard-is-it-to-get-in/

Stonewall UK. (2022, July 19). Convictions and cautions for gross indecency. Stonewall. 

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/help-advice/information-and-resources/criminal-law/convictions-and-cautions-gross-indecency#:%7E:text=The%20Criminal%20Justice%20and%20Public,were%20deleted%20from%20the%20statutes