Rex Warner (1905-1986) was an author, translator, and professor of English. Born
in Birmingham, England, he was educated at Oxford. Warner was a member of the British
Home Guard from 1942 until 1945. He was the Tallman Professor of Classics at Bowdoin
College before joining the English faculty at the University of Connecticut in 1962.
Edward
Gorey (1925-2000) was born in Chicago. He studied briefly at the Art
Institute of Chicago, spent three years in the army testing poison gas,
and attended Harvard College, where he majored in French literature and
roomed with the poet Frank O'Hara. In 1953 Gorey published The Unstrung Harp, the first of his many extraordinary books, which include The Curious Sofa, The Haunted Tea-Cosy, and The Epiplectic Bicycle.
In
addition to illustrating his own books, Edward Gorey provided drawings
to countless books for both children and adults. Of these, New York
Review Books has published The Haunted Looking Glass, a collection of Gothic tales that he selected and illustrated; The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells; Men and Gods, a retelling of ancient Greek myths by Rex Warner; in collaboration with Rhoda Levine, Three Ladies Beside the Sea and He Was There from the Day We Moved In; and The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, a collection of tales by Saki.