Goreyana Presents John Bellairs

The Goreyana blog is a great source for information about collecting the artwork of Edward Gorey and we’re pleased to see author Irwin Terry will begin a series of posts about the artwork created for the books written by John Bellairs and those completed and continued by Brad Strickland.
Gorey's contributions to the series extended for close to a quarter century, from The House with a Clock in its Walls (1973) to The Beast Under the Wizard's Bridge (2000); Terry notes this association was the “longest running series by an author(s) that Mr. Gorey was associated with.”  (We like to point out the tidbit of how both of these books feature Gorey's illustration of Jonathan Barnavelt's magic stained-glass window.  Not sure it's the Alpha-Omega thing we'd like to think it is but....)

Continues Terry:

I came to the Bellairs stories through my interest in Edward Gorey, but I have heard that there are many Gorey fans who were first exposed to his artwork because of these books. I am going to take a leisurely approach showing the books/art in the series because there are many great images to be shown and discussed.

In 1994, Edward Gorey found that his home needed extensive repairs which could be put off no longer. To this end, EG decided to sell many of the original illustrations he had been commissioned to create for various projects and authors over the years. Gotham Book Mart offered the original art, which included many of the Bellairs illustrations. When the artwork became available, I bought as many of the pieces as my budget would allow (and sometimes more than my budget could sustain!). Artwork from the Bellairs series forms a large part of my collection of Gorey originals.