The Edward Gorey Collection

The Edward Gorey Collection contains over 420 items in various formats that document the artistic and literary work of the American artist and author, Edward Gorey (1925-2000). Comprising the collection’s core is an almost complete set of Gorey’s work, including the first book Gorey published, The Unstrung Harp (1953), and all four of his anthologies—Amphigorey, Amphigorey Too, Amphigorey Also, and Amphigorey Again—the first of which was selected by the New York Times as “One of the Five Noteworthy Art Books of 1972”. Complementing the book collection are serial publications ranging from popular magazines such as Women’s Day, Newsweek, and Playboy to distinguished literary magazines like the Kenyon Review. The Gorey Collection also contains books written by other authors but illustrated by Gorey, books about Gorey, and a substantial collection of ephemera and realia comprised of posters, lithographs, postcards, correspondence with Gotham Book Mart, programs, rubber stamps, t-shirts, cups, and other Goreyana.

Rare Books and Special Collections’ Edward Gorey Collection provides a comprehensive look at the writing style, evolution of thought and technique, and range of interests of Edward Gorey. His conservative and pithy writing style and meticulous pen-and-ink drawings evoke repressive Victorian settings and the macabre and morbid humor of this complex, serious, provocative, and humorous author.

Rare Books and Special Collections acquired the bulk of the Edward Gorey collection as a gift from Suzy Conway and her brother, Robert M. Conway (’66, ’05 LL.D.). Suzy was a librarian at the Harvard Medical School Library, Countway Library, from which she retired in 2002 and is currently a poet and horsewoman. Robert earned his bachelor’s degree in 1966 and an honorary LL.D. in 2005 from Notre Dame, a M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, and a Master’s of Economics from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Robert is also a Notre Dame Trustee Emeritus. Subsequent to the original gift, Hesburgh Library continued to develop the collection, adding the few books not held as well as prints, posters, and other ephemera.

Books in this collection can be searched for in the library catalog and ephemera can be located using the finding aid. For more information about the Edward Gorey Collection, please consult Suzy Conway, "Goreymania: An Annotated Bibliography of Suzy Conway's Edward Gorey Book Collection," Master's thesis, University of Missouri, Columbia, 1976.