Why Children Love Edward Gorey: A Centenary Tribute

New York Times

21-02-2025

This weekend (Feb. 22 to be exact) marks the centenary of the birth of Edward Gorey, an artist whose work has wielded a ridiculous amount of power over my own art, and even my worldview: Why else would a seventh grader throw around words like 'epiplectic' and be unduly concerned about accidentally drinking lye?
My first encounter with Gorey's work was on television. While other prepubescent girls were swooning over Ricky Schroder from 'Silver Spoons' or Jo on 'The Facts of Life,' I was glued to PBS, enraptured by the animated titles for Masterpiece Theatre's 'Mystery!'
It wasn't about the show, or even the sinister presence of its host — a craggy Vincent Price — but about those few treasured minutes of the uncanny that penetrated the neon-soaked early 1980s. The original sequence begins with a thunderclap and the sound of rain, as a clump of overcoated men with umbrellas huddle around an urn inscribed with two mysterious words: 'Mobil Corporation.' A pterodactyl flies through the dark sky; a veiled woman in a graveyard drinks balefully from a wineglass; a bundled-up figure in a creaking wheelchair is pushed by another bundled-up figure, followed by tiptoeing detectives. Above them, burned forever in my memory, a sighing woman in white, legs bound, reclines on top of a pillar.
In retrospect it occurs to me that Gorey's odd environments enabled me — a small and strange girl who was disdainful of the shiny cultural offerings of a suburban childhood — to escape to a place where I felt I belonged. It's a milieu that seems historical but is not entirely real. It inhabits the space in my mind representing 'old-fashioned,' where, as in my cherished dollhouse, a Colonial-era butter churn can exist alongside a tiny porcelain toilet. As a testament to my Gorey-esque bona fides, the dollhouse also contained a miniature Ouija board in the child's room and a ghost made of Kleenex and cotton balls in the attic.
The setting of that title sequence, and of Gorey's more than 100 authored books, is an amalgamation of Victorian and Edwardian, with a splash of the Roaring Twenties thrown in for good measure. A great many of his stories are modeled on Victorian cautionary tales, with titles like 'The Hapless Child,' 'The Fatal Lozenge' and 'The Loathsome Couple.' The first Gorey book in my collection, acquired during high school, was 'The Gashlycrumb Tinies,' an abecedarium of children's names with rhymed couplets describing the tots' untimely deaths. ('M is for Maud who was swept out to sea/N is for Neville who died of ennui' — the latter of which was a personal favorite.)
Living among Gorey's art helped lead me down the path to my eventual career. As an illustrator of sometimes dark and funny picture books and comics, I am regularly asked whether I have a specific age group in mind when I write. (The answer: not always.) This was also a common question for Gorey. In a 1974 interview with Tobi Tobias for Dance Magazine, Gorey said that 'a lot of things' he'd done he intended for children, and then added, 'I don't know many children.'
The children Gorey drew, and there are many, are either preternaturally sophisticated little adults — like the young ballet aficionados of 'The Lavender Leotard,' who spout mature pronouncements such as 'Don't you feel the whole idea of sets and costumes is vulgar?' — or pale specimens with circles under their eyes, faced with desperate misfortune.
Gorey does, on occasion, channel what an actual child, whatever that is, might feel, as in 'The Beastly Baby,' about an infant so disgusting the reader is relieved when it explodes to bits at the end. Children troubled by a new sibling might delight in the story, but is it really for them?
Similarly, in 'The Doubtful Guest,' another story of an unwanted visitor, a creature of unknown provenance and taxonomy arrives at the home of an uptight Edwardian family and proceeds to torment them with rudeness: eating dinner plates, tearing books and standing, nose to the wallpaper, for hours on end. A kid might thrill to the possibility of such a guest — pure id — but the unresolved ending could feel a bit frustrating.
Some of Gorey's books contain no children at all and are definitely not geared toward a younger audience. 'The Curious Sofa,' subtitled 'A Pornographic Work by Ogdred Weary' (an anagram of the author's name), includes the helpful hint that 'a perfectly plain brown paper wrapper for purposes of public concealment may easily be made at home.' The book is all hilarious innuendo, with the male characters described as 'well-set-up,' 'well-endowed' or 'well-formed.' The story takes place in what seems to be the 1920s, among folks for whom free love is the order of the day, even when inducing fainting, fits of screaming and accidental death. It's a terrific book. In fact, Gorey once heard from a parent whose child 'just adores 'The Curious Sofa,'' despite not understanding it. Which I assume was kind of the point.
Nevertheless, he was hired to illustrate a number of books particularly for children, and gave them an eerie sheen, whether intentional or not. The wacky 'Freaky Friday,' by Mary Rodgers, is made unsettling in his hands, whereas the spooky 'Wolves Chronicles,' by Joan Aiken, and 'House With a Clock in Its Walls,' by John Bellairs, are made even more so. His illustrations for the Treehorn books by Florence Parry Heide are a little less creepy than they should be, considering their content: In 'The Shrinking of Treehorn,' a child becomes smaller and smaller, to both the dismay and the indifference of a cadre of adults. His adorable drawings for T.S. Eliot's 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' are rather gentle as well, albeit classics. To me, his best is not gentle, and not for children. Which makes it perfect for children.
Gorey has been an enormous influence not only on my work but also on the work of my husband, who writes under the name Lemony Snicket. We spent much of our early courtship scouring the shelves of used-book shops for Gorey's illustrated covers of classic novels. Years later, we collaborated on a book called '29 Myths on the Swinster Pharmacy,' in which two dour children obsess over a mysterious drugstore. My first draft of the illustrations attempted to mimic Gorey's art, complete with copious amounts of crosshatching and handwritten text.
Edward Gorey has felt to me like a secret. But what is clear is that a great many people share that secret, which makes the secret less secret. After all, calling someone a cult figure means there is a cult. His modest house on Cape Cod, for instance, has been made into an exquisite museum, attracting a constant stream of acolytes, at least in the summer months. Every time I go, I am shocked that I am not the only one there. To be honest, I am even loath to write about it here, lest it get too crowded.
Here's another confession: At the moment I should be hard at work on my graphic novel, parts of which I just now realized are stolen from — I mean are a homage to — Gorey. It's about ghostly primary school students and contains ghoulish flashbacks to the shuffling off of their mortal coils.
It might lead some adults to wonder whether it's for children. Which means it's perfect for children.