Gorey, a Master of the Macabre, Dies at 75

Edward S. Gorey '50, the author and illustrator whose dark drawings found humor in death, passed away on Saturday at the age of 75.

He suffered a heart attack on Wednesday.

Gorey's best-selling books used rhyme, whimsy and a distinctive cross-hatched style to depict the macabre, from the 26 dying children (one for each letter of the alphabet) of The Gashlycrumb Tinies to the hook-nosed visitor of The Doubtful Guest, who never seems to leave.

The author also won a Tony Award for designing costumes for the 1978 Broadway production of "Dracula."

As a French concentrator at Harvard, Gorey spent his undergraduate years in Eliot House after serving in the army during World War II.

He roomed with the poet Frank O'Hara and was friends with the poet John Ashbery. Gorey joined Cambridge's Poets Theater with O'Hara, where he worked as a designer, director and playwright.

"We were all very interested in being avant garde," Gorey said in one interview.

After graduation, Gorey moved to New York and took a job in Doubleday Books' art department.

It would be one of just three workaday jobs he held in his entire life before launching the career as freelance illustrator he pursued until his death.

Gorey--who often wrote under amusing anagrams of his own name, such as Ogdred Weary, and D. Awdrey-Gore--authored more than 100 books during the course of his career and illustrated more than 60 works by other authors.

His most recent book, The Headless Bust: A Melancholy Meditation on the False Millennium, was published last October by Harcourt Brace.

The Harvard library system includes over 90 works by Gorey, and an original poster of his hangs on the wall of the Signet, a social club for Harvard students involved with the arts.

John A. Burton '01, one member of the Signet, has a Gorey reproduction of his own as well.

"I like his sense of humor a lot. I might even say it's the tuning fork by which I calculate my own," says Burton, who is also vice president of the Undergraduate Council.

Gorey's quirky fascination with death, Burton says, may hold a particular resonance for Harvard students.

"Certainly his obsession with themes of morbidity, psychological trouble, those might be a reflection of his time at Harvard," Burton says. "His sick sense of humor--I think it's hard to spend four years here without getting that."