Edward S. Gorey '50, the author and illustrator whose dark drawings found humor in death, passed away on Saturday at the age of 75.

He suffered a heart attack on Wednesday.

Gorey's best-selling books used rhyme, whimsy and a distinctive cross-hatched style to depict the macabre, from the 26 dying children (one for each letter of the alphabet) of The Gashlycrumb Tinies to the hook-nosed visitor of The Doubtful Guest, who never seems to leave.

The author also won a Tony Award for designing costumes for the 1978 Broadway production of "Dracula."

As a French concentrator at Harvard, Gorey spent his undergraduate years in Eliot House after serving in the army during World War II.

He roomed with the poet Frank O'Hara and was friends with the poet John Ashbery. Gorey joined Cambridge's Poets Theater with O'Hara, where he worked as a designer, director and playwright.

"We were all very interested in being avant garde," Gorey said in one interview.

After graduation, Gorey moved to New York and took a job in Doubleday Books' art department.