The world of Edward Gorey (1996).pdf

Authors: Clifford Ross, Karen Wilkin, Edward Gorey (Illustrator)
Hardcover: 189 pages
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (September 1, 1996)
Language: English

Edward Gorey is an author and an illustrator who has carved a unique niche creating macabre graphic novels that are part satire and part social commentary--comics for adults. Though often relating lurid tales of Victorian crime, Gorey eschews blood and gore in favor of atmosphere and humor. Here the editors have collected a representative sample of his work. Ross, an artist, and Wilkin, an art critic, also provide a useful introductory essay on Gorey's work and an informative interview with him. The book includes a complete bibliography and photographs of Gorey's library and studio.

Habitual watchers of PBS TV's long-running Mystery! may constitute the largest number of Edward Gorey fans--provided, of course, that they all love the show's animated introduction, for it is Gorey's contribution. Long before the show, Gorey had attracted a staunch band of admirers with his gravely humorous rhymed stories set in an Edwardian never-never land and illustrated in children's picture-book fashion, one drawing per page or line of verse. If your child had a somewhat morbid sense of humor, they could be marvelous children's books, but they were basically for adults fascinated by Gorey's literary and artistic allusions and the droll dreariness of his densely crosshatched style (although he rarely uses color, his thicket of lines ineluctably conjures them in the mind's eye; of course, all are the hues of dusk). Besides a little gallery of his work, this sampler includes a literate admiration by Wilkin and a splendidly amusing tete-a-tete with the artist by Ross. Ray Olson