COMING in OCTOBER 2024 from CHRONICLE BOOKS
The Theatrical Adventures of Edward Gorey: Rare Drawings, Scripts, and Stories
From his boyhood in Chicago, he was fascinated by theater. Once he got out of the Army, artist /author Edward Gorey launched half a century of experiments on stages from Pittsburgh, PA, to Provincetown, MA. Now at last his fans, collectors, and fellow thespians can discover his extraordinary theatrical artwork and scripts, from sets and costumes for The Mikado to an original opera for hand puppets.
For anyone who’s ever been curious about the brilliant, eccentric creator of such classics as Dracula on Broadway, the PBS Masterpiece Mystery animation, and strange little storybooks like The Curious Sofa and The Gashlycrumb Tinies, this lavish volume is a treasure trove. For art lovers, it’s a spectacular exhibition of intricate drawings and full-color paintings. For actors and directors, it’s a revelatory look at a unique writer’s never-before-published scripts for the stage.
Learn more about The Theatrical Adventures of Edward Gorey and preorder here (US, UK, Australia)
For a short e-book chronology and sampler of Gorey’s stage work, with live music, video, and website links, check out Edward Gorey On Stage: A Multimedia Memoir.
$5.99 on Amazon, Kobo, iTunes/AppleBooks, GoogleBooks, Nook/Barnes&Noble, and other e-outlets.
Here’s a sample:
Prologue
How to categorize Edward Gorey? A writer with a flair for drawing? An artist who also told stories? A distinctive book designer and illustrator? A maker of odd ephemera, from beady-eyed beanbag animals to esoteric playing cards? A godfather of Goth? A sine qua non for Tim Burton, Lemony Snicket, and other macabre-minded line-straddlers? Two decades after his death, booksellers still debate whether to shelve Gorey’s elusively plotted, obsessively penned little books under Art, Humor, or Children’s.
One label that’s rarely proposed is dramatist. Yet ever since he arrived at Harvard University after World War II, Gorey’s stories have popped up persistently onstage. Starting in the late 1980s, when he moved full-time to Cape Cod, theater encroached on his creative life to the point of engulfing it.
In person—over lunch at Jack’s Outback, for instance—Edward Gorey was as hard to pin down as his work. He had a staggering ability to shift focus from a film he saw thirty years ago to today’s menu to last night’s episode of “Third Rock from the Sun” to Schubert’s repetitions to Roman coins under Trebonianus Gallus. Every subject seemed to fascinate him, although you couldn’t be sure, since he talked about each of them with the same acuity of perception and utter nonchalance of tone.
Being hard to pin down extended to new projects. Edward hated to say no. Rather than refuse a job, he’d either ignore it or claim some other obligation he couldn’t get out of. You formed the impression that, like his hapless characters, Edward Gorey was perpetually being stalked by unseen threats. Even when it was clear he’d lavished enormous care on a drawing or story, he acted as though it had ambushed him—leapt on him from an overhanging branch and dragged him into the shrubbery. Ask him why he’d written this or that book, or what projects were on his drawing board, or even which had come first, the elephant on wheels or the woman standing under it, he was likely to mutter “Oh, I don’t know,” and wave a heavily be-ringed hand in vague embarrassment.