The great Edward Gorey, mid-century master of the macabre and darkly delightful, was a prolific illustrator of his own irreverent books like The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Curious Sofa: A Pornographic Work by Ogdred Weary , The Shrinking of Treehorn, among countless others, and would occasionally illustrate existing literature, like classic fairy tales, H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, and T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. But Gorey, unbeknownst to many, also designed dozens of book covers, including a number for some of literary history’s greatest classics during the paperback revolution, primarily while working at the Doubleday art department between 1953 and 1960. Here are his finest such masterpieces:

Find more Gorey gold in the Brain Pickings archive — including some rare, limited-edition vintage gems — and swing by my Pinterest collection of Gorey art.

↬ Metafilter; portrait of Gorey via Vol. 1 Brooklyn