Edward St. John Gorey (1925-2000) is best known to the mainstream public for the animation-containing urns and flashlight-carrying detectives and women fainting across tombstones-in the opening credits of PBS's Mystery! He is also a cult hero to many who have followed his work since the 1950's. Gorey's dark whimsical worlds poke fun of human anxiety and fear of death.

One of his most famous books is The Gashleycrumb Tinies (see below), which begins:

A is for Amy who fell down the stairs.
B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
C is for Clara who wasted away.
D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh.

The abecedarium continues in this manner, illustrating the deaths of twenty-six small children.

Gorey, who illustrated the books of other writers as well as his own, was a prominent figure in the book arts. In The World of Edward Gorey (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), art historian Karen Wilkin writes:

Unlike the majority of traditional illustrations, the best of Gorey's drawings could easily stand on their own as independent works of art, detached from the strange narratives that provoked them, their mystery wholly conveyed by purely visual means. (This is not to discount the significance or charm of Gorey's writing.) What chiefly identifies his work as book art is its intimacy. His drawings reward scrupulous attention and are most eloquent when they are examined close up, at leisure-as when you hold a book. They have the uncanny, stop-time quality of vintage photographs and the grainy textures and tonalities of engravings from the era before the photographer displaced the draftsman as the supplier of images for drawings and newspapers.

Gorey's art also had an impact on the theater. His most well-known set-design was for the Broadway production of Dracula, which became known as Edward Gorey's Dracula because his designs were so impressive. For perhaps the first time in theater history, critics actually began their reviews by talking about the sets.

The Art and Architecture Library's current exhibit contains several of Gorey's books, including pop-up and tunnel books (see below), a stuffed bat, paper dolls, a collection of games based on Gorey's illustrations and stories, and miniature reproductions of the Dracula set designs (see above).