by Rowena Mills
If you are a fan of the PBS television series MASTERPIECE Mystery!, you have seen the clever animated sequence in the opening titles, a half-minute distillation of Edward Gorey’s art. If you are an aficionado of all things feline, you might know Gorey’s cartoonlike cats, which appear in many of his books. And in this year, the centennial of his birth, we can reflect on his lifelong love of cats, his cat artwork, and his legacy of aiding animal welfare.
Edward St. John Gorey (February 22, 1925–April 15, 2000), born in Chicago, is considered a major figure in American art, literature, and theater. He was noted for his own illustrated books and for cover art and illustrations for books by other writers. His characteristic pen-and-ink drawings often depict vaguely unsettling narrative scenes in supposedly Victorian or Edwardian settings.
Gorey drew pictures at 18 months, taught himself to read at three years, and was reading classics by age five. He had pets, especially cats, all his life. By age eight, he was producing little books about his cats, with illustrations that showed them dancing. He skipped part of elementary school and later attended the Francis W. Parker School, where he was encouraged to exhibit art. His drawings were published in Chicago newspapers.
Gorey attended one semester at the Art Institute of Chicago before he was drafted into the U.S. Army at age 18. He served from 1944 to 1946, stationed mainly at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.
He attended Harvard University on the G.I. Bill, majoring in French literature, and graduated in 1950. He worked as an illustrator for publishing companies in the 1950s, including Doubleday Anchor in New York from 1953 to 1960. He became recognized as a significant figure in the design world.
Gorey freelanced from the early 1960s until this death. He eventually produced 116 books of his own and illustrated more than 500 books of other writers. They include works of Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot (Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which the musical Cats is based on), Charles Dickens, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Hilaire Belloc, Edmund Wilson, Virginia Wolff, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker, Raymond Chandler, and Gilbert and Sullivan.
Gorey’s own illustrated (and in some cases wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air, have long had a cult following. Although his books typically are found in the humor and cartoon sections of major bookstores, his work has also been categorized as surrealist and gothic. Gorey has become an iconic figure in the goth subculture. He classified his own work as literary nonsense, the genre made famous by Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.
Gorey’s drawings of cats appear in many of his works, portrayed more realistically in the early years but stylized and more humanlike later. The physical appearance of the typical “Gorey Cat” was established by the time Gorey published Amphigorey in 1972.
In 1977, Gorey designed the Broadway revival of Dracula, a smash hit. Gorey received the Tony Award for best costume design and was nominated for the award for best scenic design. With royalties from the play, Gorey bought a 200-year-old captain’s house (“Elephant House”) in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and lived there full time from 1983.
Six generations of one cat family went with Gorey wherever he moved.
On April 15, 2000, Gorey died of heart failure in Hyannis, Massachusetts. In 2002, his home in Yarmouth was opened as the Edward Gorey House Museum, whose profits and programs benefit literacy causes and animal rights.
Gorey left most of his estate to the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, established for the welfare of all living creatures, including dogs, whales, birds, bats, insects, invertebrates, and — of course — cats. And 25 years after his death, his legacy still helps all those creatures — and people still enjoy his famous Gorey Cats.
