Amphigorey: Fifteen Books: Fifteen Stories

If you like Edward Gorey’s work, this collection contains all his classic stories. This one contains Gashleycrumb Tinies )still the best for cheering the cockles of the heart, especially one that delights in macabre humour) as well as The Hapless Child and The Insect God. The illustrations are reproduced beautifully, capturing each nuance of the detail.

I'd never heard of Edward Gorey till his work came up as a recommendation on Amazon when I purchased 'Struwwelpeter'.This is a wonderful collection of fifteen short stories/ funny alphabets/ collections of limericks. One 'story' is wordless. A couple have colour pictures and are particularly suitable for a younger audience. One is subtitled 'A Pornographic Work' (you're quite safe reading it!)I have reviewed each individually (qv), but in brief:1) The Unstrung Harp is to my mind the funniest in this collection - the tale of a struggling writer, written in wonderful rather Victorian English, and with accompanying illustrations.2) The Listing Attic - a collection of excellent limericks3) The Doubtful Guest - another wonderful short story (in rhyming couplets) of a peculiar creature who turns up one day to live with a Victorian family4)The Object-Lesson - very strange; 3 b/w illustrations per page, each with a line of text. No obvious thread to the narrative - seemed to me to be a take-off of Japanese haiku5)The Bug Book - in colour, and aimed at kids too, tale of some friendly bugs and how they deal with a nasty big bully bug who shows up one day6) The Fatal Lozenge - A brilliant alphabet, each letter featuring a person (from Apparition to Zouave) with a 4 line verse7) The Hapless Child - A parody of terribly sad Victorian children's tales (only THEY usually have a happy ending!)8) The Curious Sofa - For me the weak point of the collection. Meant to be a funny pornographic tale, but I just found it silly9) The Willowdale Handcar - Weird, but funny, tale of three young people who decide to take off in a handcar one day. At times quite scary things occur, but as in many Gorey tales, don't expect a conclusion...10) The Gashlycrumb Tinies - Seems to be Gorey's best-known work: a very funny alphabet of 26 little kids who each meet a grisly and quite unusual end ("F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech")11)The Insect God - I loved this 'cautionary tale' about a little girl who accepts sweets from a stranger - and is abducted and taken off to be fed to an insect! Meanwhile her Victorian family "grew sick with apprehension, Which a heavy tea only served to increase"12)The West Wing - a wordless 30 picture work; each appears to show something spooky in a room - a shadow of a levitating woman; a ghostly face peering through window; handkerchiefs flying...) There's no narrative or story, but I found it grew on me the more I looked at it.13) The Wuggly ump - in colour and definitely aimed at kids, the story of three good little children, weaving daisy-chains and eating their bread and milk; but the Wuggly Ump has left his lair and is headed their vway.14)The Sinking spell - not one of the best but quite entertaining tale of a creature (whom we never see) descending into the house of a Victorian family15) The Remembered Visit - not a funny story, but rather sad and beautiful tale of a little girl being taken to visit an elderly gentleman...Her recollections of the event: topiary, his not wearing socks...and later her guilt at an unfulfilled promise...Buying Amphigorey is the best value way of acquiring a whole collection of Gorey works.

What the title says. The quality of the printing is quite poor. The lines are faded and undefined, which is a big problem since Gorey's work is all lines. But it's an inexpensive way to see these stories, which would be very expensive otherwise. Just be aware before you purchase this book.

My favourite illustrator. Was excited to see this collection, however my copy arrived damaged. Severely creased pages. The product itself isn't what I expected. The quality of images wasn't great and not very well compiled from small books to this full size version, too much white space between and around the text and illustrations.

I did enjoy reading this but Edward Gorey is definitely very weird and random with his ideas and a couple of the stories haunted me for days afterwards. I love that he makes you use your own imagination. What he presents you with is only half a story. It's up to you to draw your own conclusions. So when you find a story a bit disturbing and wonder where that came from, Gorey can't be held accountable, in only created the idea, you filled in the blanks yourself.

I have to agree with the other reviewer who complained about the poor print quality. it's hard to understand given that the book is otherwise quite handsomely presented. Given that gorey's appeal resides in the intricacies of his drawings this version is hard to recommend. Probably better to get them individually and experience them as Gorey intended.

Excellent collection. So much fun. Super dark/not suitable for children but wasn’t meant to be.

The book was in excellent condition and is a good collection to have to collect the Edward Gorey stories together in one place.