The Hapless Child

February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000

Edward Gorey was an American writer and artist noted for his macabre illustrated books. Gorey is typically described as an illustrator. His books can be found in the humor and cartoon sections of major bookstores, but books like *The Object Lesson* have earned serious critical respect as works of surrealist art. His experimentations — creating books that were wordless, books that were literally matchbox-sized, pop-up books, books entirely populated by inanimate objects — complicates matters still further. As Gorey told Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe, "Ideally, if anything [was] any good, it would be indescribable." Gorey classified his own work as literary nonsense, the genre made most…