BORN TO BE POSTHUMOUS: THE ECCENTRIC LIFE AND MYSTERIOUS GENIUS OF EDWARD GOREY.

New York: Little Brown, 2018. 503 pp, 9 1/2" H. B&w photographs, reproductions. "From 'The Gashlycrumb Tinies' to 'The Doubtful Guest', Edward Gorey's wickedly funny, deliciously sinister little books have influenced our culture in countless ways, from Tim Burton's movies to Ann Sui's fashion to Neil Gaiman's 'Coraline' to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Some call him the Grandfather of Goth (which would've given him the fantods). Just who was this man who lived with six cats, owned more than 20,000 books, roomed with the poet Frank O'Hara at Harvard, and liked to traipse around in floor-length fur coats, clanking bracelets, and an Edwardian beard? An eccentric, a solitary, an enigmatic auteur of whimsically morbid masterpieces, yes - but who was the real Edward Gorey behind the Oscan Wildean pose? He published more than a hundred books and illustrated works by Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Edward Lear, John Updike, Charles Dickens, Muriel Spark, Bram Stoker, and John Bellairs, among others. At the same time, he was a deeply complicated and secretive man, a reclusive master whose art reflected his obsessions with the disquieting, the darkly amusing, and - other things. Based on newly discovered correspondence and interviews with Goreyphiles as diverse as John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, Edmund White, and Anna Sui, this book draws back the curtain on this mysterious genius and his eccentric life." Very light wrinkling at the top/bottom of the spine, a few pages with a small fore-edge bump, very light browning to the fore-edge of the text block. Dust jacket has been price-clipped, has very minor edge wear/wrinkling, minor rubbing.. Not Signed. Third Printing. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. Illus. by Edward Gorey..