Edward Gorey was an Amer­i­can artist that is best known for his depic­tion of the macabre. He’s most com­monly referred to as an illus­tra­tor, whose style could be clas­si­fied as sur­re­al­ist. He wrote and illus­trated more than 100 books, done in such a way that could be called, “gothic” — often pen and ink, lim­ited color and have an impend­ing doom to them.

Gorey exten­sively exper­i­mented with books — books that were word­less, books that were matchbox-sized, pop-up books, books pop­u­lated by inan­i­mate objects. He would often call his work “lit­er­ary nonsense”.

I enjoyed learn­ing more about Gorey because of his quirk­i­ness. He pub­lished inde­pen­dent works under pen names, using ana­grams (he also enjoyed puns). Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde, Ms. Regera Dowdy were just some of the names he came up with. In his later years, he moved to Cape Cod, Mass­a­chu­setts where he wrote and directed numer­ous evening-length enter­tain­ments, often fea­tur­ing his own papier-mâché pup­pets. He was also a pop-culture junkie, fol­low­ing soap operas and come­dies such as Pet­ti­coat Junc­tion and Cheers, in addi­tion to darker shows like Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer and the X-Files.

First two images from Gorey­books, third image from Sotheby’s, and fourth and fifth images from It’s Dark in the Dark.