Edward Gorey:
Biographical excerpts courtesy of Edward Gorey House website:
“Author and artist Edward St. John Gorey (1925-2000) was a child prodigy, drawing pictures at the age of two, and teaching himself to read by the age of three. Excelling at school, he skipped some early years, arriving at Chicago’s legendary Francis Parker School in the ninth grade. Upon graduation from Parker, Gorey enrolled for some art courses at the Art Institute of Chicago before entering the U.S. Army. He served during World War II from 1943 until after the end of the war—primarily at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.
In 1946 he enrolled at Harvard (majoring in French Literature) and began pursuing numerous artistic interests, publishing stories, poems, designing sets, directing and writing for the influential Poets Theatre (with John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Alison Lurie, Violet Lang and others).
In late 1952, with Harvard behind him, he was offered a position with Doubleday's new imprint Doubleday Anchor in New York City (Gorey had attended Harvard with Barbara Epstein, the wife of Doubleday Anchor publisher Jason Epstein). Gorey rapidly became a significant figure in their art department, designing more than fifty covers and, more importantly, becoming recognized as a major commercial illustrator. Gorey moved through other publishing Houses (Looking Glass Library, Bobs-Merrill) before finally turning freelance in the Mid-1960s—a position he maintained for the rest of his life. There is no firm count as to the number of books Gorey illustrated for others, but likely well over three hundred. In addition to this massive commercial workload, Gorey began writing and illustrating his own works (which would eventually number over 100) starting with his 1953 book, The Unstrung Harp, an illustrated 64-page novella about the creative struggles of a novelist. The book stands today as one of the early precursors to the graphic novel movement in which both text and illustration tell the story.
In February 1980 Gorey was asked to design animated introductions for Boston Public Television’s Mystery! series. Working with animator Derek Lamb and his team, their collaborative result continues, over 30 years later, to be Gorey's most iconic work (though it is in fact a half-minute distillation of several of his works).
Although Gorey avoided “explaining” his many enigmatic books, during one of his interviews he did say to an inquiring journalist, when asked about his philosophy or religion, that he was a Taoist, and perhaps a surrealist. From his early teen art there are strong homages to Di Chirico, Dali and Ernst clearly in evidence, as is his admiration for Sir John Tenniel, George Herriman and James Thurber).
Edward Gorey published over one-hundred of his own works and has illustrated the works of Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, John Updike, Charles Dickens, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Hilaire Belloc, John Ciardi, Muriel Spark, Edmund Wilson, Peter Neumeyer, Virginia Woolf, H.G. Wells, Florence Parry Heide, Bram Stoker, Raymond Chandler, Gilbert & Sullivan, and many others.
After his death in 2000 his Cape Cod home was converted into the Edward Gorey House, a museum whose profits and programs help benefit animals rights and literacy causes. The Edward Gorey House has become a landmark cultural attraction contributing to the community with annual exhibitions, children's events and literary programs (for children as well as adults) The House is open to the public mid- April through December) with an annually changing exhibit and permanent displays.