“The Utter Zoo Alphabet”

by Edward Gorey

The Ombledroom, the Posby, the Quingawaga, and the Raitch are but a few of the strangely engaging creatures that inhabit the world of Edward Gorey’s Utter Zoo Alphabet. Taken from Gorey’s book of the same title, these twenty-six dark, delightful drawings lure you, as only Edward Gorey’s work can, into an animal kingdom never before encountered in the ordinary world. Then again…

Edward Gorey’s peculiarly distinctive drawings and prose appear in his books, The Doubtful Guest, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Glorious Nosebleed, The Unstrung Harp, and numerous other books. His drawings have been exhibited at the Gotham Book Mart Gallery in New York City, as well as other exhibition venues in major museums, galleries, art schools, libraries, and institutions across the country. Gorey is also noted for his set and costume designs for productions that include the Broadway play Dracula: Murder, a David Gordon ballet preformed by the American Ballet Theatre at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco; the Mikado, staged by Carnegie Mellon University; and many local plays in Cape “Cod, Massachusetts, where he lived. He is especially recognized as the creator of the animated titles that introduce PBS’s Mystery series. He died in April 2000.