The opening-night celebration for “Something Else Entirely,” the new show celebrating the illustration art of Edward Gorey at New York’s Society of Illustrators (one of the city’s most undersung museums), drew the largest crowd of any exhibition in the institution’s 125-year history. “The connection people have to Gorey is evident in the huge response to this exhibition,” says Steve Compton, director of exhibitions at the Society of Illustrators.
It’s a connection that is now a century old; this year marks 100 since author and artist Edward Gorey’s birth. By age two, he was drawing pictures; by three, reading; and by 13, he had published his first commercial work in his hometown Chicago newspaper. After being drafted and serving in World War II, Gorey accepted a scholarship from Harvard, where his artistic pursuits really began in earnest. His work while he was a student there is on display in another new Gorey-themed exhibit at Harvard’s own Houghton Library, where you’ll find original drawings he made for his college roommates alongside original works for ballet costumes and stage sets.
“The drawings for his roommate show just how early in his career he developed his distinctive aesthetic and sense of humor,” says Molly Schwartzburg, Philip Hofer curator of printing and graphic arts at Houghton Library.
That aesthetic and sense of humor is instantly recognizable. While it may be familiar to the widest audience thanks to Gorey’s Dracula (he famously designed the sets and costumes for the 1977 Broadway production), PBS’s Mystery!, or his wildly popular children’s book The Gashlycrumb Tinies (I have spent a number of Halloweens myself bringing its alphabetized demises to life), the particular wonder of Gorey is that you can always identify him, whether he was working under his own name or one of the many pseudonyms he had in rotation. “It’s the deadpan tone; his ability to evoke a sense of vague, impending doom with humor; and that unmistakable, cross-hatched, semi-Victorian world,” says Compton.
Gorey fans, I can personally attest, are a devoted bunch; the few first editions I have squired away (including my favorite, 1965’s The Recently Deflowered Girl) are some of my most prized possessions. What’s particularly thrilling about these two new centennial exhibits is the opportunity to get a look at some of his lesser-known work, like those undergraduate sketches at Harvard and the countless illustrations Gorey churned out for other publications and authors, which is how he started his career (he designed book jackets for Anchor Books and Doubleday). It’s then, says Compton, that he began hand-lettering and honed his skill at distilling the essence of a novel into a single image without overpowering the text. “A voracious reader himself, Gorey could reference the classic, obscure, and modern all at once without sacrificing his collaborator’s voice,” says Compton. “His art and unique perspective could make any book or article instantly intriguing, adding a kind of gothic sophistication that invited readers in.”
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To wit, in “Something Else Entirely” there’s a sprawling illustration of women in black, men collapsed at their feet and peering out cautiously from their bustle skirts for Helen Vendler’s review of Notable American Women in a 1972 issue of The New York Times Book Review; an eerie greyscale garden maze and rambling topiary for a 1984 cover of TWA’s Ambassador magazine; a teensy spot illustration of a man in a trench on the case for TV Guide to accompany a regular gossip feature that first appeared in 1988; and a grinning skeleton luxuriating with a book in a striped hammock while elegantly dressed guests at a garden party look on with concern for a 1995 summer reading campaign for Bantam Books. The last drawing Gorey published in his lifetime is also on display here: an assemblage of fashionably frocked women arranged around letters spelling “black” for a 2000 issue of The New Yorker listing an exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology titled “The Little Black Dress and Other Signs of Status.” On paper, many of these assignments wouldn’t necessarily appeal, but brought to life by Gorey’s pen, they are utterly captivating.
But why, exactly, does Gorey continue to draw fans en masse now? In part it may be because his art and writing are a cleverly executed study in contrast. “Gorey’s work walks that perfect line between dark and funny, childlike and morbid,” says Compton. While he clearly reveled in darkness, there was always light too. “His work welcomes us into a gloomy world, but also makes this world hilarious and strangely lovable,” adds Schwartzburg.
And while some of that parallel proto-Victorian universe Gorey conjured feels old-fashioned, the work somehow doesn’t age. “It’s emotionally timeless,” says Compton. “He captured loneliness, absurdity, and curiosity in a way that still feels modern.” And, crucially, in a way that was, and is, deeply human—which in 2025 may be more valuable than ever.
“Something Else Entirely: The Illustration Art of Edward Gorey” is on view at the Society of Illustrators through January 3. “Edward Gorey: The Gloomy Gallery” is on view at Houghton Library through January 12.
