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

by **Mark Dery** (Author)

**The definitive biography of Edward Gorey, the eccentric master of macabre nonsense.**

From _The Gashlycrumb Tinies_ to _The Doubtful Guest_, Edward Gorey's wickedly funny and deliciously sinister little books have influenced our culture in innumerable ways, from the works of Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman to Lemony Snicket. Some even call him the Grandfather of Goth.

But who was this man, who lived with over twenty thousand books and six cats, who roomed with Frank O'Hara at Harvard, and was known -- in the late 1940s, no less -- to traipse around in full-length fur coats, clanking bracelets, and an Edwardian beard? An eccentric, a gregarious recluse, an enigmatic auteur of whimsically morbid masterpieces, yes -- but who was the real Edward Gorey behind the Oscar Wildean pose?

He published over a hundred books and illustrated works by Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Edward Lear, John Updike, Charles Dickens, Hilaire Belloc, Muriel Spark, Bram Stoker, Gilbert & Sullivan, and others. At the same time, he was a deeply complicated and conflicted individual, a man whose art reflected his obsessions with the disquieting and the darkly hilarious.

Based on newly uncovered correspondence and interviews with personalities as diverse as John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, and Anna Sui, _Born to Be Posthumous_ draws back the curtain on the eccentric genius and mysterious life of Edward Gorey.

### Author Biography

**Mark Dery** is a cultural critic. He coined the term Afrofuturism, popularized the concept of culture jamming, taught at Yale and NYU, and has published widely on pop culture, the media, and on the mythologies (and pathologies) of American life.

His books include _Flame Wars_, a seminal anthology of writings on digital culture; _Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the end of the century_, _The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink_, and the essay collection, _I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams_. Like Gorey, his mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible.

**Number of Pages:** 512

**Dimensions:** 1.5 x 9.5 x 6.3 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** November 06, 2018

## Details

- **Price:** 35.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 35.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

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

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