Out of This World: New Biography Illuminates Edward Gorey's Extraordinary Life

The Washington Post draws readers' attention to a new (and, apparently, the first) biography of visual artist Edward Gorey, whose illustrations adorned dust jackets of poetry books, including T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. In his review, Ernest Hilbert notes Gorey formed a "two-man counterculture" with Frank O'Hara. The two were undergraduates at Harvard. Hilbert writes: "So what do we know about the ever elusive Gorey?" Picking up from there: 

Contrary to expectations, he claimed to have enjoyed a “typical sort of Middle-Western childhood.” Born in 1925, the only child of a doting mother and a dashing newspaperman father, his budding intellectual fancies were lavishly indulged. He began drawing before age 2 and, by 8, had read “Frankenstein,” “Dracula” and the collected works of Victor Hugo. By the time he finished high school and a stint in the Army, he had devoured thousands of books, from dime-store mysteries to “Ulysses,” according to his Harvard application. Once at Harvard, he cultivated a bohemian persona and befriended the poet Frank O’Hara, with whom he formed a “two-man counterculture.” Though Gorey claimed to be “asexual” and celibate while in college, he found himself gripped by a number of homosexual “crushes” of a kind that would continue throughout his life, though all seem to have quickly fizzled.

After graduating, he made his way to Manhattan, where he made rent with memorable dust-jacket illustrations for such works as T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” He managed nearly perfect attendance at the New York City Ballet during the era when George Balanchine presided, which explains why his enigmatic figures tend to strike Balanchinian poses. He could be spotted at intermission in his trademark raccoon coat, jeans and scuffed Keds, Viking-like rings clanking on his fingers as he gossiped about his favorite dancers. When not at the ballet or work table, he read or went to the movies. He eventually amassed more than 20,000 books and sometimes took in as many as a thousand films a year.

Learn more at the Washington Post.