Edward Gorey at Anchor: A Collection of 105 Doubleday Anchor Books with Cover Art and/or Typography by Gorey, 1953-1973

New York: Anchor / Doubleday. Three years after graduating from Harvard in 1950, Edward Gorey moved to New York to work in the art department of the newly founded Anchor Books division at Doubleday. The brainchild of two young editors, Jacob Epstein and Barbara Zimmerman, Anchor led a new wave of imprints offering high-quality but affordable paperback reprints of the classics, as well as literary fiction and serious non-fiction. Soon followed by New Directions, Meridian, Vintage, and others, Anchor intended their paperbacks to be kept and valued rather than destined for the junk pile. "Printed on quality paper and with sturdier bindings than mass-market books, they employed urbane visual languages characterized by conceptual, surreal, and abstract illustrations, complemented by spare modernist typography." Epstein and Zimmerman--friends of Gorey from college--knew him to be an inveterate reader capable of comprehending the essence of any text and capturing it on a book cover in his uniquely quirky visual language. "His style was so individual," writes Steven Heller, "that the covers themselves did not literally illustrate scenes as much as they evoked moods or set off sparks of recognition."

Gorey worked at Anchor until 1960 (and did occasional freelance work for them afterward), during which approximately 200 Doubleday Anchor paperbacks were published. Gorey illustrated the covers for more than 50 of them, and did the typography for many more, designing spines, endpapers, title pages, and interiors to give the imprint an aesthetic uniformity. "Gorey's covers and jackets were not done anonymously or as mere throwaways, as many others were. Nor was this a strategic compromise until he found his true calling. Today, this body of work exemplifies his unique contribution to truly exceptional era of graphic design.".

This collection includes 53 Doubleday Anchor books with covers designed by Gorey. We have been unable to locate a definitive list of his Anchor covers, but believe this to be a complete or near-complete collection. Additionally, the collection includes a representative sample of 52 Anchor books with covers by other artists, but typography by Gorey. The group of non-Gorey covers includes art/design by Leonard Baskin (19 books), Max Beerbohm, Eugene Berman, Antonio Frasconi, Seong Moy, Philippe Julian, Milton Glaser, George Giusti, Robin Jacques, John Rombola, and others. All books are mass market paperback size (7" x 4"). Some are first printings, some are later. Nearly all were first published between 1953 and 1960, but a few date from Gorey's later freelancing days. A few have internal markings, and one (the rarest title in the group) is lacking the back cover, but the vast majority are in very good condition. A complete list of titles is available upon request.

Sources: All quotations in our description come from Steven Heller, Edward Gorey, His Book Cover Art and Design (Pomegranate, 2015), pp. 6-14. We also used the Loyola University Libraries Digitial Special Collections Exhibit "G is for Gorey - C is for Chicago: The Collection of Thomas Michalak" and the 2018 Literary Hub blog post "Edward Gorey's Illustrated Covers for Literary Classics" by Emily Temple in our research. (Inventory #: 23576)