Sunday, 17 August 2014

Edward Gorey illustrates for children

The Wuggly Ump to Lear's nonsense and Ciardi's King



People are often confused by Edward Gorey in thinking of him as a children's author and then coming upon a brilliantly dark book like The Loathsome Couple.

But Gorey did indeed illustrate many children's books, though mostly those written by others. A couple of superb examples shown here are John Ciardi's The King Who Saved Himself From Being Saved and Edward Lear's The Jumblies and The Dong with a Luminous Nose.
Although Gorey has been recorded as expressing dismay at having to 'churn out' countless tedious illustrations for books to make a living, I often see in his children's illustrations a great sense of fun and imagination. There's clear evidence of his love of Japanese art in the waves for this page of The Dong.


The Wuggly Ump is that rare thing, a children's book both written and illustrated by Edward Gorey. It's very simple but inevitably fiendish! The first edition is in three spot colours on top of the black and white drawings - yellow, blue and taupe - while this slightly later edition has only blue as an additional colour.

I will be selling these and other books written and/or illustrated by Edward Gorey, as well as items of ephemera and more on eBay over the next few months, starting around August 31st, 2014. See my longbarrow eBay page.

2 comments:

  1. As for The Loathsome Couple, which is remarkable, it was inspired by the moors murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

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  2. The Young Readers Press 1966 first printing of The Wuggly Ump as illustrated here will be going live on eBay from the evening of August 31st, 2014, with a start price of £8.50 or about $14.

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