Edward Gorey

Edward John Gorey (February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000) was an American writer and artist known for his macabre illustrated books. Edward St. John Gorey was born in Chicago. His parents, Helen Dunham Garvey and Edward Lee Gorey, divorced in 1936 when he was 11 years old and later remarried in 1952 when he was 27. One of his stepmothers was Corinna Mura (1909-65), a cabaret singer who had a role in the classic film Casablanca, portraying the woman playing guitar while singing "La Marseillaise" at Rick's Cafe Americain. His father worked briefly as a journalist. Gorey's affectionate great-grandmother, Helen St. John Garvey, was a popular 19th-century writer and artist, from whom he claimed to have inherited his talent. Gorey attended various local schools and then the Francis W. Parker School. From 1944 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Army at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and later attended Harvard University from 1946 to 1950, where he studied French and roomed with poet Frank O'Hara. Although he often stated that his art education was "negligible," Gorey studied art for one semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1943. From 1953 to 1960, he lived in New York and worked in the art department of the publishing company Doubleday Anchor, illustrating book covers and occasionally adding illustrations to the text. He worked on various books such as Bram Stoker's "Dracula," H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," and T. S. Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats." In the following years, he created covers and illustrations for many children's books by John Bellairs, as well as books started by Bellairs and continued by Brad Strickland after Bellairs' death. His first independent work, "The Unstrung Harp," was published in 1953. He also published books under pseudonyms that were anagrams of his name, such as Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde, Ms. Regera Dowdy, and dozens of others. He also signed his books with names like Eduard Blutig ("Edward Gory") and O. Mude (German for O. Weary), a German pun on his name. In his later years, he lived year-round in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, where he wrote and directed numerous afternoon plays, often featuring his own papier-mâché puppets, in a troupe known as "La Theatricule Stoique." Gorey was renowned for his love of ballet (for many years, he was an avid attendee of every performance by the New York City Ballet), fur coats, tennis shoes, and cats, of which he had a large number. Although Gorey's books were popular with children, he did not interact much with them and did not feel particular affection for them. Gorey never married. From 1996 until his death in April 2000, the usually reclusive artist was the subject of a cinéma vérité-style documentary directed by Christopher Seufert. The documentary was not released until 2010.