Edward Gorey is famous for masterful pen-and-ink crosshatched drawings and ironic, offbeat humor. He won critical acclaim and an avid worldwide following during his prolific career. He produced more than one hundred illustrated works, created prize-winning set and costume designs for Broadway shows, published numerous illustrations for a variety of publications, and illustrated the works of many well-known authors, including Raymond Chandler, T. S. Eliot, Gilbert & Sullivan, Edward Lear, Bram Stoker, John Updike, and Virginia Woolf. With his enigmatic and often darkly humorous tales full of eccentrics, Gorey left his unique stamp on American art and culture. Bats, cats, and men in fur coats make frequent appearances in his artwork, as do exotic and quirky creatures known only in the trademark crosshatched drawings emanating from his pen. All of Gorey's characters inhabit an enigmatic, often vaguely Edwardian world, where human foibles and frailties are deftly assuaged by witty flights of fantasy. This book for the coloring aficionado contains an introduction about Edward Gorey; 25 original drawings to color; a lay-flat binding; and high-quality paper, easy to use with all your fine coloring tools.
Author
Born in Chicago, Gorey came from a colourful family; his parents, Helen Dunham Garvey and Edward Lee Gorey, divorced in 1936 when he was 11, then remarried in 1952 when he was 27. One of his step-mothers was Corinna Mura, a cabaret singer who had a brief role in the classic film Casablanca. His father was briefly a journalist. Gorey's maternal great-grandmother, Helen St. John Garvey, was a popular 19th century greeting card writer/artist, from whom he claimed to have inherited his talents. He attended a variety of local grade schools and then the Francis W. Parker School. He spent 1944–1946 in the Army at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and then attended Harvard University from 1946 to 1950, where he studied French and roomed with future poet Frank O'Hara. Although he would frequently state that his formal art training was "negligible", Gorey studied art for one semester at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 1943, eventually becoming a professional illustrator. From 1953 to 1960, he lived in New York City and worked for the Art Department of Doubleday Anchor, illustrating book covers and in some cases adding illustrations to the text. He has illustrated works as diverse as Dracula by Bram Stoker, The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. In later years he illustrated many children's books by John Bellairs, as well as books in several series begun by Bellairs and continued by other authors after his death.
