queer theory

Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Genius and Mysterious Life of Edward Gorey

The writer and illustrator Edward Gorey, who died in 2000 at 75, was the unequaled master of gothic whimsy, camp-macabre melodrama, and morbid nonsense. His obsessively crosshatched, amusingly lugubrious little worlds, conjured up with pen, ink, and Victorian-Surrealist verse, have influenced the novels of Lemony Snicket and Ransom Riggs, the movies of Tim Burton and Guillermo Del Toro, the fashion of Anna Sui, and the graphic novels of Alison Bechdel, among others. Based on newly uncovered correspondence and interviews with members of his inner circle, Born to Be Posthumous draws back the curtain on the eccentric genius and mysterious life of Edward Gorey.