The Utter Zoo by Edward Gorey

Hardcover format.

Twenty-six curious creatures—from the fastidious Ampoo to the world’s one and only Zote—fill the pages of The Utter Zoo, an alphabet from the untamed imagination of Edward Gorey. The Boggerslosh, the Crunk, and the Dawbis; the Ippagoggy, the Jelbislup, and the Kwongdzu; the Scrug, the Twibbit, and the Ulp—each strange and wonderful zoomate displays its own primary characteristic, described in Gorey’s inimitable, droll, rhyming couplets.

First published in 1967, The Utter Zoo is a favorite of Gorey fans, young and old alike—no matter how well they know their ABCs.

About the ARTIST
Edward St. John Gorey was a Harvard grad, a brilliant artist, a celebrated set and costume designer (his costumes for a Broadway production of Dracula earned him a Tony Award), a lover of animals (particularly cats) and the arts (he seldom missed a performance of the New York City Ballet), and an avid deltiologist—an obscure word so Gorey—like you might think he invented it himself (it means “a collector of postcards”). His humorously unsettling drawings of vaguely Victorian innocents often facing unfortunate ends became familiar to a wide audience after appearing in the opening credits of the PBS television series Mystery!