The Haunted Tea-cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas - Hardcover

Gorey, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747545308 ISBN 13: 9780747545309

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1999

Synopsis

Edmund Gravel, known as the Recluse of Lower Spigot, is preparing to take tea by himself on Christmas Eve. Just as he is waiting for the week's teabag to steep, the tea-cosy twitches and from beneath it leaps a creature - the Bahhum Bug. Then they are joined by the Ghost of Christmas past.

About this title

Review

Edward Gorey's first book in 25 years, The Haunted Tea-Cosy is a classic work from that magnificently morbid master. The plot of this "dispirited and distasteful diversion for Christmas" revolves around one Edmund Gravel, an Edwardian Scrooge whose attempt to slice a stale fruitcake unleashes an assortment of guilt-inducing ghosts. There's the Spectre of Christmas That Never Was, who directs our hero's attention to a cowering orphan in a graveyard (along with some other, lower-key bits of pathos: "In the high street of the village Reverend Flannel lost his tuning-fork.") The Spectre of Christmas That Isn't also chips in with a kidnapping, a domestic dispute, and a return to the aforementioned graveyard: "To the south, in the cemetery a wrong coffin in a newly dug grave was found to contain rolls of used wallpaper." Like the Dickensian miser upon whom he's based, Gravel is transformed by this ghoulish guided tour. He renounces his life of solitude and invites all of Lower Spigot to a party, featuring "a cake taller than anything else in the room, a conflation of Chartres Cathedral and the Stupa at Borobudur iced in dazzling white sugar" (not pictured, alas). Gorey's illustrations for The Haunted Tea-Cosy are looser and less elaborately cross-hatched than some of his earlier creations. But like the text, these oddly stilted and very Anglophiliac scenes remain a model of delicious, deadpan hilarity. --James Marcus

About the Author

Edward Gorey (1925-2000) wrote and illustrated such popular books as The Doubtful Guest, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, and The Headless Bust. He was also a very successful set and costume designer, earning a Tony Award for his Broadway production of Edward Gorey's Dracula. Animated sequences of his work have introduced the PBS series Mystery! since 1980.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0747545308
• ISBN 13: 9780747545309
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 64
• Illustrator: Edward Gorey