HYANNIS, Mass. (AP) -- Edward Gorey, whose comically macabre
stories, illustrations and theater set designs were once described
as ``poisonous and poetic,'' has died. He was 75.
Gorey died Saturday at Cape Cod Hospital after suffering a heart
attack earlier in the week.
He wrote at least 90 books, illustrated 60 others and won a Tony
Award in 1978 for his costume design for the Broadway production of
``Dracula.'' In the 1980s, his characters made the leap to
television in the opening and closing titles of the PBS series
``Mystery!''
Gorey's stories, illustrated by line drawings in pen and ink,
often showed vaguely Edwardian characters in bleak settings,
reacting in prim distress to strange situations, such as the
intrusion of a penguinlike, sneaker-wearing creature. The bizarre
stories and illustrations reflected an elegantly macabre sense of
humor.
``The Hapless Child,'' for instance, is a tale of a little girl
with nice parents who winds up -- through a horrible series of
misfortunes -- being kept in bondage by a drunken brute until she
finally escapes. No happy ending, though: She is run over by a
carriage driven by her own father, and he doesn't recognize her
emaciated body as that of his daughter.
Gorey was far from morbid himself, friends say.
``There was this false idea that he was a brooding, melancholic
man,'' said Andreas Brown, owner of the Gotham Book Mart in
Manhattan, an early champion of Gorey's work. ``He was not a
recluse. He was jovial and effervescent, and he loved to laugh.''
Brown has called Gorey ``the Edward Lear of the 20th century,''
a reference to the English artist who wrote and illustrated ``The
Owl and the Pussycat'' and other rhymes. Critic Edmund Wilson
described the world created in Gorey's work as ``poisonous and
poetic.''
His early work included a set of illustrations published in 1963
under the title ``The Vinegar Works; Three Volumes of Moral
Instruction.'' They featured a grisly alphabet book, ``The
Gashlycrumb Tinies,'' in which ``A is for Amy who fell down the
stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears, C is for Clara who
wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh. ...''
The book was included in ``Amphigorey,'' an anthology of 15
stories published in 1972 by Putnam, that brought Gorey's work to a
wider audience. It was followed by ``Amphigorey Too'' in 1974 and
``Amphigorey Also'' in 1983.
``To take my work seriously would be the height of folly,''
Gorey told The Associated Press in 1994.
Gorey initially tried to be a novelist, but eventually to the
smaller books on which he built his career. He also designed sets
and costumes for a number of theater productions, and staged his
own ``Gorey Stories'' in New York in 1978.
In the 1980s, Gorey moved to Cape Cod, where he led a small
theater troupe that performed his works in plays and puppet shows.
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On the Net:
Gorey gallery and list of works: http://www.goreyography.com
Edward Gorey Bibliography, a fan site:
http://www.fearofdolls.com/gorey.html
