History Creator / EdwardGorey

* ''{{The Epiplectic Bicycle}}'' (1969): Two children ride a strange and seemingly magical bicycle on a journey of gothic nonsense.

* ''The Epiplectic Bicycle'' (1969): Two children ride a strange and seemingly magical bicycle on a journey of gothic nonsense.

* AdultFear: All his books run on the adult fear of ennui, loneliness, and the fears of children unprotected by the world and adults around them.

* Gamebooks: ''The Raging Tide or The Black Doll's Imbroglio'': Not a game, exactly, but this Edward Gorey's non-linear story uses the Choose Your Own Adventure technique.

* BearsAreBadNews: One of the Gashlycrumb Tinies, Basil, is mauled to death by bears.
** The titular ''Evil Garden'' in the book of the same name also had ferocious bears that guard its fruit.

* AmbiguousEnding: A good chunk of Gorey's books do not have proper endings, but instead stop very abruptly.

* ViewerGenderConfusion: Zigzagged in ''The Green Beads''. The book features a "disturbed person" of an indiscernible gender towards the beginning. In the latter half, they're revealed to be female.

* ''The Loathsome Couple'' (1977): When a couple is unable to bear children, they go about abducting randomy children and murdering them in cold blood.

* Drop the Cow: A common gag in Gorey's works is that objects will mysteriously fall from the sky out of nowhere, sometimes even killing people.

* AnvilOnHead: A common gag in Gorey's works is that objects will mysteriously fall from the sky, sometimes even killing people.

* FathersQuest: Parodied in ''The Hapless Child'', which concerns the pretty and tended daughter of a British Army reservist who is called to duty overseas. Not long thereafter, the mother falls into a "decline" that proves fatal. The daughter gets shunted to an orphanage, which in those days was a legalized hellhole. She escapes, only to fall into the clutches of a "brute" who keeps her prisoner in a basement, making lace in minimal lighting. The father returns home, learns the fate of his wife, and that his daughter has gone missing from the orphanage. He rides his motorcar through the London streets daily, calling his daughter's name in a desperate hope that she'll appear.

* OrphansOrdeal: Exaggerated in ''The Hapless Child''. The child protagonist not only loses both of her parents and her uncle, her only other living relative, [[spoiler:but she is then sent to an orphanage where she is treated cruelly by the other children and teachers. She then runs off, gets kidnapped and sold to a mentally ill "brute", forced to make paper flowers in poor living conditions, becomes nearly-blind, and finally gets run over by her own father who was desperately looking for her. Made even worse when her father can no longer recognize her from all she's been through.]]

* RichesToRags: Charlotte Sophia, the protagonist of ''The Hapless Child'', starts off living comfortably with her affluent family, becomes an orphan after her father is presumed dead and her remaining relatives die, and eventually lives in poor living conditions in hard labor before her untimely death.

* ''The Hapless Child'' (1961): The daughter of a British Army reservist is orphaned when her father is deemed dead in battle and her mother falls into a decline. Afterwards, the girl goes through many hellish episodes, each one worse than the last.

* ''The Hapless Child'' (1961): The daughter of a British Army reservist is orphaned when her father is deemed dead in battle and her mother falls into a decline. Afterwards, the girl goes through hellish scenarios, each one worse than the last.

* ClothingDamage: The entire premise of ''The Abandoned Sock'', although it is not played for fanservice. In a similar vein as ''The Hapless Child'', a sentient sock comes off a clothesline when it decides it's bored of being there, and then goes through all kinds of damage and deterioration when it is brought over to what appears to be a household maid.

* CensoredChildDeath: Save for Kate and Winnie, we do not actually get to see the deaths of The Gashlycrumb Tinies, only the events that occurred right before. This ironically makes it all the more eerie.

* ConvulsiveSeizures: Susan, one of the Gashlycrumb Tinies, has some of these, resulting in her death.

* DeathByDespair: One of the Gashlycrumb Tinies, Neville, dies of ennui.

* KidnappedFromBehind: One of the Gashlycrumb Tinies, Hector, meets this fate.

* QuicksandSucks: One of the Gashlycrumb Tinies, Quentin, dies by sinking into a mire.
** In ''The Evil Garden'' one of the characters die by being sucked into a bubbling pond.

* StaircaseTumble: The first death in The Gashlycrumb Tinies. "A is for Amy who fell down the stairs."

* ''The Gashlycrumb Tinies'' (1963): An alphabet book featuring the [[TheManyDeathsOfYou various grim deaths]] of [[CrossesTheLineTwice 26 small children]].

* StaticCharacter: You won't find very much character development in any of Gorey's books.

* StaticCharacter: You won't find very much character development in many of Gorey's books.