Although his work seems commissioned by the spirit of All Hallow's Eve, the work of Edward Gorey supercedes it. He pushed and expanded both literary and visual boundaries, borrowing from Japanese prints, Victorian and Edwardian memes, juvenile formats as well as various poetic and literary forms. The ambiguous shapes of Edwardian dress trimmings in Les Passementeries Horribles. The banal horror of The Loathsome Couple. The doomed yet somehow not entirely pitiable children in The Gashlycrumb Tinies, who perish in alphabetical order.
