Even the envelopes Gorey sent to Neumeyer were often illustrated and addressed with calligraphic flair.

"Yet another infant carried off—how sad," Gorey wrote of the scene on this envelope. "The altitude is in process of turning it blue with cold. It has reached the lavender stage apparently."

“I wrote to Edward Gorey that Helen had found his envelope illustration of the blue infant sad," Neumeyer says of his wife's reaction to the previous image. "We soon received another, wherein the baby triumphs.”

If you are interested in literary translation there are, in the United States at this time, only three MFA programs in literary translation. Only two of these are linked to creative writing programs. The Queens College MFA program in literary translation is one of those two. Even if I had not been a New Yorker, I would have given Queens College very serious consideration.

Gorey is known for his creature creations, wrought with slyly dark humor. In his own life, he had great respect for the tiny lives that inspired his drawings—in fact, he dedicated his estate to the benefit of animals, "not only cats, dogs, whales, and birds, but also bats, insects, and invertebrates."

The title page for the final Gorey-Neumeyer collaboration, Why We Have Day and Night.

Edward Gorey (left) and Peter Neumeyer pose on the buoy in Barnstable Harbor, Gorey's first home on Cape Cod, where the two first met.

Early correspondence between Gorey and Neumeyer centered on the children's book Donald and the..., which Neumeyer had originally written and illustrated in watercolor for his children. On the upper left corner of the letter accompanying this housefly illustration, Gorey taped the head of the "model." ("I add that it was a corpse before I began using it," Gorey wrote.)

Edward Gorey and Peter Neumeyer, both voracious readers, often exchanged insights discovered in books. Here, Gorey quotes Lady Murasaki, author of The Tale of the Genji; ancient philospher Gorgias; Jorge Luis Borges; and Ouida, pen name of novelist Maria Louise Ramé. (To read the quotations, click here.)