A "bracingly bleak tale"

[bloodygranuaile]

Last time I was at the Edward Gorey House I picked up a copy of a lesser-known work titled The Iron Tonic: Or, A Winter Afternoon in Lonely Valley. Like many Gorey works, it’s somewhat hard to say what it’s about; it seems to be largely a description of a bleak winter afternoon, 19th-century-Russian-novel style, and no tonics feature in it whatsoever, iron or otherwise. Each page has a long rectangular illustration filling up the page and then a smaller, circular illustration imposed on it; the effect is busy but charming. Overall I don’t think it’s his strongest work but it’s still faux-gloomily silly and absurd.