The infant’s trajectory passed him over the rectory

Edward Gorey created humorous, curious stories in a series of pictures akin to cartoon strips but in picture-book form. These images provide story-like situations about the mundane and familiar, the obtuse and ambiguous, the coincidental and the fateful with a deliberately detached air. Except for a few books he created without text, most of the artist’s work revels in the combination of visual and word imagery and alliteration.