Gorey 100 at the Library of Congress
By • January 13, 2025 0 10
Edward Gorey’s work, distinctly Edwardian, was never gory. True, he populated his curious tales with stoic victims of misfortune — among the childhood fatalities alphabetized in 1963’s “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” Ernest “choked on a peach” and Fanny was “sucked dry by a leech” — but his pen-and-ink illustrations are bloodless, adding to their surrealistic aura.
It seems that the campaign for a 2025 Gorey postage stamp, to be issued on Feb. 22, the centennial of his birth, was unsuccessful. However, a modest exhibition to mark the occasion is on view in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, 10 First St. SE, through March 12.
As a font of morbid humor, Gorey’s only peer (prior to the rise of filmmaker Tim Burton) was New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams, whose first wife of three, Barbara Jean Day, inspired the character Morticia Addams, played onscreen by Carolyn Jones, Anjelica Huston and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
In contrast to Addams, Gorey was a bearded, bookish eccentric, six-foot-two, who wore long raccoon coats, chunky rings and Converse sneakers. He studied French literature at Harvard on the G.I. Bill and, in 1980, told Boston magazine: “I suppose I’m gay. But I don’t really identify with it much.”
Gorey’s unmistakable style, already formed when he designed the covers of 1950s Anchor paperbacks, found a new audience through his Tony-winning costumes and Tony-nominated sets for the 1977 Broadway revival of “Dracula,” starring Frank Langella and later Raul Julia. In 1980, PBS launched its long-running “Mystery!” series, each episode opening with a Gorey sequence, animated by Derek Lamb and set to anxiety-producing music.
The first of Gorey’s more than 100 books, published in 1953, was “The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel.” Recording the frustrations of a forehead-less, mustachioed author to arrive at a plot for a book of that title, its pages feature crosshatch-heavy illustrations accompanied by blasé, pseudo-British commentary, such as: “Mr Earbrass is seen on the croquet lawn of his home, Hobbies Odd, near Collapsed Pudding in Mortshire. He is studying a game left unfinished at the end of summer.”
Most with three-word titles beginning with “The” — sometimes with anagrammatic author names such as Ogdred Weary — Gorey’s odd little volumes were republished in the 1972, 1975, 1983 and 2006 (posthumous) collections “Amphigorey,” “Amphigorey Too,” “Amphigorey Also” and “Amphigorey Again.”
Perhaps Gorey’s greatest passion was for the New York City Ballet under George Balanchine. He is said to have attended every performance for 25 years. “The Lavender Leotard,” published by Gotham Book Mart in 1973, opens as follows: “The author introduces two small, distant, ageless, and wholly imaginary relatives to fifty seasons of the New York City Ballet.”
From “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” 1963. Edward Gorey.
An earlier book for balletomanes is “The Gilded Bat” of 1966. Sample caption: “You’re right, that was ‘Glinka’ they were doing, but ‘Minkus’ he was wearing.” (Balanchine choreographed two “Pas de Trois” ballets, one set to music by Mikhail Glinka and the other to music by Léon Minkus.)
In 1979, Gorey purchased an 18th-century sea caption’s home, now the Edward Gorey House, at 8 Strawberry Lane in Yarmouth Port, described on the museum’s website as “a somewhat over-ripe village on Cape Cod.” When the museum opens for the season on April 10, its namesake’s 100th birthday will have passed. Likewise, it appears that a documentary by Christopher Seufert, who interviewed and filmed the author in the last five years of his life — Gorey died of a heart attack at age 75 on April 15, 2000 — won’t be finished in time.
Partly to make up for his fur wearing, Gorey, who owned multiple cats and at one point welcomed a raccoon family, was determined to support animal welfare after his death. The New York-based Edward Gorey Charitable Trust “pursues its mission by licensing Mr. Gorey’s intellectual property, lending his work to museums and other exhibitors and issuing grants for animal rescue, care and conservation.”
The Library of Congress display, “100 Years of Edward Gorey,” draws on collections acquired from Glen Emil of Chevy Chase, Maryland, creator of the web portal goreyography.com; and by the late Gorey bibliographer and Gorey House board member Edward Bradford.
Among the featured items are first editions of “The Unstrung Harp,” “The Curious Sofa” and “The Sopping Thursday”; artwork, costume sketches and scenery from the Broadway production of “Dracula”; a set of cats-and-dogs postcards; and Gorey-related merchandise items.
The best time to visit is during Live! At the Library, held every Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. During regular hours, Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., free timed-entry passes can be reserved at loc.gov.
