THE GASHLYCRUMB TINIES

	A is for AMY who fell down the stairs
B is for BASIL assaulted by bears
	C is for CLARA who wasted away
D is for DESMOND thrown out of a sleigh
	E is for ERNEST who choked on a peach
F is for FANNY sucked dry by a leech
	G is for GEORGE smothered under a rug
H is for HECTOR done in by a thug
	I is for IDA who drowned in a lake
J is for JAMES who took lye by mistake
	K is for KATE who was struck by an axe
L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks
	M is for MAUDE who was swept out to sea
N is for NEVILLE who died of ennui
	O is for OLIVE run through with an awl
P is for PRUE trampled flat in a brawl
	Q is for QUENTIN who sank in the mire
R is for RHODA consumed by a fire
	S is for SUSAN who perished of fits
T is for TITUS who flew into bits
	U is for UNA who slipped down a drain
V is for VICTOR squashed by a train
	W is for WINNIE embedded in ice
X is for XERXES devoured by mice
	Y is for YORRICK whose head was knocked in
Z is for ZILLAH who drank too much gin

************** Edward Gorey.Artist, writer and illustrator: born Chicago 25 February 1925; died Hyannis, Massachusetts 15 April 2000. RESPONDING TO the news that the American author and illustrator Edward Gorey was seriously ill, Sunday's New York Post confidently dismissed the story, saying that the artist had had medical problems on and off for years ("mostly related to insomnia"). In fact, Edward Gorey was dead. He had died on Saturday, following a heart attack earlier in the week. A man with a wildly macabre sense of humour, Gorey would have been gratified.  "I'm not entirely enamoured of the idea of living for ever," he confided to a journalist some years ago and was doubtless amused by persistent rumours that the author and artist of such bizarre books as The Unstrung Harp (1953) and The Listing Attic (1954) was long deceased. It was small wonder, since his stories invariably harked back to a bygone age: the dying days of the Edwardian era, depicted in closely cross-hatched, black-and-white line illustrations and recounted in spidery lettering that recalled the captions of silent cinema. Gorey's sinister little tales about haunted, pale-featured characters living in a world of bleak, clouded landscapes and gloomy, shadow-filled interiors earned him a reputation as the modern master of American Gothic.But whilst his dark view of the world owed something to the febrile imagination of Poe and whilst his draughtsmanship had a kinship with that of his fellow American cartoonist Charles Addams, Gorey's work had wider European affiliations embracing the brooding nightmares of Goya and Fuseli, the budding decadence of Beardsley and the poisonous penmanship of Ronald Searle. His use of language had the inventiveness of Lear and Carroll, the extravagance of Joyce and repititious frenzy of Beckett. But what was uniquely his own was the way in which he hinted at, rather than showed, the nastiness that so often lurks beneath the respectable appearance of the staid, tightly buttoned characters who, whilst paying lip-service to the rules of social decorum, secretly indulge their infidelities and indiscretions as well as their frequently murderous thoughts and deeds. Out of sight, beyond the borders of his single-frame illustrations, all manner of things go on: Gerald, in Gorey's obliquely pornographic story The Curious Sofa (published in 1961 under the anagrammatic pseudonym of "Ogdred Weary") "did a terrible thing to Elsie with a saucepan", while other members of the house party romp in the garden with blushing, but swiftly compliant, ladies and strapping domestics who know how to serve their masters. The Loathsome Couple (1977) its serial child-killers, Mona and Harold, expiating their own miserable childhoods by disposing of a succession of unfortunates in a "remote and undesirable villa". Although many were scandalised by Gorey's early work (and publishers were nervous about putting it into print), he consistently maintained that the dark interpretations placed upon his drawings had less to do with the eye of the artist than with the mind of the beholder. "I feel," he once said, "that I am doing the minimum amount of damage to other possibilities that may take place in a reader's head."   The young Gorey's earliest pictures - which he later said "showed no talent at all" - were executed when he was 18 months old. The drawings, mostly of trains, were, he once said, more reminiscent of "irregular sausages".Gorey eventually embarked on writing and illustrating his own stories, full of disturbing incident set in a dislocated worlds where, as in The Doubtful Guest (1957), a strange penguin-like creature wearing a scarf and sneakers insinuates its way into the bosom of a glum Edwardian family. Within his ubiquitous settings - linoleum-covered floors, swathes of heavy drapes, overstuffed ottomans, jungles of aspidistra and acres of oppressive wallpapering - are acted out ambiguous morality plays and cautionary tales such as the alphabetical catalogue of disasters that overtake The Gashlycrumb Tinies (1963) .The titles ofGorey's books always set the tone: The Fatal Lozenge (1960), The Hapless Child (1961) and The Beastly Baby (1962). Grief, despair, loneliness and unexpected - often unnatural - deaths are the common ingredients. Gorey produced his own books under the imprint Fantod Press. Gorey described a fantod as "the vapors, the nervous tizzies", and he was to personify them in some of his books as tiny, winged creatures carefully preserved in bell jars. Gorey's work - often published under such unlikely pen-names as Aedwyrd Gore, Dreary Wodge and [Madame] Groeda Weyrd - initially found only a cult readership but it quickly grew into a international reputation that was cemented by the publication of three anthologies of his early stories, Amphigorey (1972), Amphigorey Too (1974) and Amphigorey Also (1983). Looking like a character from one of his books - bearded like a Russian patriarch, dressed in a long fur coat and tennis shoes - in 1983, Gorey forsook New York for a ramshackle farmhouse on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he lived out the remainder of his days reading Dickens and Austen interspersed with books by Agatha Christie and E.E Benson. Gorey's solitary bachelor existence was relieved only by the companionship of a horde of cats. In one of his last books, The Haunted Tea Cosy (1999), he offered a darkly revisionist version of the haunting of Scrooge in a Christmas Carol. It typified the work of an artist who once remarked that to take his work seriously "would be the height of folly", but whose bizarre tales have found an affectionate audience around the world who enjoy both shivering and laughing at the grim, the grisly and the gruesome. The sky has turned completely black; It's time to think of turning back.

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