Book Review - Edward Gorey - The Unstrung Harp

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1953 – Bloomsbury Press Edward Gorey’s short self-illustrated nonsense tales were written with children in mind but his publishers found them rather dark, Gothic and unsettling in tone, though they bear much of the nonsense style of Lewis Carrol and Edward Lear. His debut work, The Unstrung Harp, subtitled Mr Earbrass Writes A Novel, (The Unstrung Harp of the main title). It is basically about a writer struggling to start, complete, edit, publish and publicise his novel before going off for a much needed holiday. The process is seen as highly unpleasant for Earbrass, who senses half way through his work that he considers it to be rubbish and almost destroys it, and then realizes that he needs extensive rewrites, etc. He gets into phases of depressive madness where he even thinks his own moustache is growing on him for someone else. It is the dark pencil drawings that Gorey illustrates the work with which really stand out. I particularly like the literary dinner he attends where he finds every writer there simply ghastly – they are all drawn exactly the same as he is. None of them enjoys being a writer. Gorey was American and rarely travelled abroad, though he purposely wrote as if in Edwardian England, and though he makes Earbrass incredibly miserable with his craft, the impression is that Gorey enjoyed every minute of his work. He is certainly a joy to read. Arthur Chappell