I was recently contacted by Karen Roth, a fellow Edward Gorey enthusiast who did some detective work after reading my blog post about the publication of Saint Melissa the Mottled (November 3, 2012). In this post, I pondered if SMtM was the only example of Edward Gorey's college era prose writing to appear in the Radcliffe College publication Signature at that time.
Ms. Roth found that the Harvard University Library has digitized issues of Signature from 1947 - 1950 and that there are in fact three short stories and three poems by Edward Gorey published in the magazine. Saint Melissa is actually Mr. Gorey's fourth piece to appear in print.
- Temperaments (poem, Vol. 2 No. 5, April 1948)
- On The Ultimate Evening Of Your Earthly Existence (poem, Vol. 4 No. 1, Fall 1949)
- All That First Evening (story, Vol. 4 No. 1, Fall 1949)
- Saint Melissa-the-Mottled (story, Vol. 4 No. 2, Winter 1949)
- Sonnet (sonnet, Vol. 4 No. 3, Spring 1950)
- To Start On A Journey Is To Reach Its End (story, Vol. 4 No. 3, Spring 1950)
All of the pieces are credited as being written by Edward St. John Gorey except the first, Temperaments which is credited as Edward Gorey. To peruse the magazines and read all of Mr. Gorey's writings for Signature, go to this link: https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:35365546$1i
It is unfortunate that Signature did not ask Edward Gorey to create any illustrations for the publication.
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2 comments:
Those pieces are... incredible. He is so very himself, even then.
Great work, Karen - thank you both for sharing. Is there a way to access Gorey’s Dugway plays? I’ve only seen Les Aztèques, but it’s clear Dery had access for his biography.
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