Edward Gorey: His Book Cover Art and Design

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Edward Gorey: His Book Cover Art and Design, with essay  by Steven Heller

Oh, this was a fun book!  It's a lovely collection of many of Edward Gorey's book covers, with particular emphasis on his early work at Anchor.  This is by no means a complete collection of all the covers Gorey ever did, even of the Anchor titles; it's just a nice sampling.  And there's a rather interesting essay to go along with the covers--again, mostly but not entirely about the Anchor period.  My favorite bit:
Gorey was given certain authors to illustrate as a matter of course.  He recalled, "I became very well known for my Henry James covers.  I hate him more than anybody else in the world except for Picasso....I've read everything by Henry James, some of it twice, and every time I do it I think, 'Why am I doing this again?  Why am I torturing myself?  I know how I feel. Why can't I just accept that?'...Everybody thought, 'Oh, how sensitive you are to Henry James,' and I thought, 'Oh sure, kids.'  If it's because I hate him so much, that's probably true."



Not in the book, but look!





Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 26, 2016 at 6:02 PM

    Hahahahaha, I find it somehow unbearably delightful that Edward Gorey did not love Henry James. Huzzah! He and I can make common cause around our mutual dislike of Henry James, should we happen to run into each other one day in the afterlife.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanMay 26, 2016 at 10:01 PM

    I know!! I think we should all have a 'we hate Henry James' party with Gorey.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownNovember 8, 2017 at 6:07 AM

    Glad to find this post, even 18 months later. It was Gorey's covers that pulled me into Joan Aiken's alternate world in her Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, and I owe him a big thanks for that, not to mention how I used his Amphigorey collection to impress my college friends in 1970. I'll have to find this book and add it to my collection of Gorey-ana.

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