edWaRd sT. jOhn gORey was born February 22, 1925, in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Edward Gorey, Senior, was a newspaperman for the Hearst papers. His mother, Helen Garvey, and his father divorced when Gorey (Jr.) was eleven and remarried when he was twenty-seven.
Gorey never formally attended art school, although while in high school he participated in weekyl classes at the nearby Art Institute of Chicago.
At the age of 19 he entered a non-combatant position in the army in Utah. Two years later in 1946 he left the army and went to study French at Harvard.* At Harvard he befriended many budding artists, including Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, VR (Bunny) Lang, and most significantly the poet Frank O'Hara, with whom he shared a room. The small group of friends went on to produce many artistic, theatrical and literary collaborations.
Gorey says he had been introduced to the ballet in Chicago in "1937 or '38," and although his interests at the time ran more to athletic pursuits, he was captivated. After three years at Harvard Gorey settled in New York City, in 1953. In New York City he began to go watch the New York City Ballet, and gradually went more and more until he was seeing every performance by the company. (His book The Lavender Leotard is subtitled "Going a Lot to the New York City Ballet.") For seventeen years, Gorey attended every performance of every ballet the company danced, even when they performed the Nutcracker. Gorey's passion for ballet and the work of George Balanchine became popularized in interviews, and soon he was recieving commissions from ballet companies such as The Ballets Trocaderos de Monte Carlos, and dance books, by such author/dancers as Allegra Kent.
Gorey has stated his multitudinous influences as including Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Lady Murasaki, Gustav Dore, and, of course, George Balanchine.
In addition to New York, Edward Gorey also lived in Massachusetts for a good part of his life. He had houses in Barnstable and Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, to which he retreated in the ballet's off-season.
Edward St. John Gorey died in April of 2000 from an apparent heart attack. By the age of seventy-five he had produced over ninety works, including books, anthologies, and illustrations for other authors.