The Books of Edward Gorey by Tom Gauld

I discovered Edward Gorey’s work in the college library where there was a tatty old copy of ‘Amphigorey’ I loved the short, sinister tales in it, with their deadpan humour and dense scratchy ink drawings. The book had a strange atmosphere, as if it had come from another world. I hunted for more of his books. Each one was like a volume of a vast encyclopedia of that world; a re-imagined edwardian era, full of obscure details and strange occurrences…Alphabets, Bearded Gentlemen, Cats, Dolls, Emptiness, Fur Coats, Graves, Hapless Children, Inanimate Objects, Jalopies, Kidnappings, Ladies Swooning, Menacing Shadows, Nonsense, Ominous Skies, Po-Faces, Quills, Raging Tides, Sneakers, Topiary, Urns, Violent Deaths, Writers, eXotic Fashions, Yawning Chasms, Zoology

Gorey created more than 80 books. He wrote, illustrated, hand lettered and designed each one in his own way. His style and methods remained almost unchanged throughout 56 years of work. This continuity adds to the feeling that they document a real, faraway place. He even looked like a character who’d wandered out of one of his books. In 1998 I went to New York and visited the shop which had stocked his work since the fifties. It was perfect; …lots of obscure old books patrolled by a fat cat…a creaky staircase leading to a dusty Gorey gallery…and enough of his books to bankrupt me for the rest of my trip. At the time, Gorey lived in a suitably creepy house in Cape Cod and I considered going to visit him. I didn’t go. I now wish that I had. If only to ask a question. One which I suspect he was asked a lot and probably wouldn’t have answered but one which each of his books seems to goad the reader into asking, into hunting for more of the books, scouring the text and searching the images, hoping to find clues.

What on Earth does it all mean?

by Tom Gauld