The Doubtful Guest

The Doubtful Guest is a short, illustrated book by Edward Gorey, first published by Doubleday in 1957. It is the third of Gorey's books and shares with his others a sense of the absurd, meticulous cross-hatching, and a seemingly-Edwardian setting. The book begins with the sudden appearance of a strange, penguin-like creature in a turn-of-the-century manor house. An aristocratic family struggles to coexist with the creature, who is by turns despondent and mischievous. By the final page, the guest has stayed for seventeen years, and shows "no intention of going away".

Description

Like Gorey's other works, The Doubtful Guest follows the traditions of surrealism and nonsense verse. It contains fourteen pages, each with an image and a rhyming couplet. Gorey began sketches and notes for The Doubtful Guest around 1955, referring to the story as "A Peculiar Visitor". The title eventually became "The Visit", and finally "The Doubtful Guest". Gorey claimed the book was intended for children, although Doubleday declined to release it as a children's book.

Guest

Guest or The Guest may refer to:

Guest (surname)

The surname Guest is derived from the Old English word "giest", which in turn comes from the Old Norse word "gestr", both of which mean "guest" or "stranger." Spelling variations may include Gest, Geste, Gueste, Ghest, Geest, Geeste, Gist, Ghost, Jest. Other European counterparts to the name include the German and Dutch "Gast", Luxembourgish "Gaascht", Swedish "Gäst", Norwegian "Gjest", Serbian and Slovakian "Gost", Czech "Host", etc.

Among the various theories on last name origins, according to the book "The Norman People and Their Existing Descendants in the British Dominions and the United States of America by H.S. King & Company, 1874 ", "Guest" derives from a place and not from the occupational status of some ancient forebear given to chronic visiting. Guest, the place, was near Caen, Normandy, and the original bearers of the name are said to have taken part in the Norman Conquest of England under William I in 1066. After the conquest, the family settled in Salop (now Shropshire) in middle-western England and apparently held the estate known as Lega from the De Dunstanvilles. Some ancient land records show Alan De Guest granting the lands of Alric de Lega (Guest) to a monastery called Wembridge Priory in 1150. His son Thomas (a name which occurs frequently in the Guest line) is mentioned in 1180. Some of the other Guests of antiquity were Thomas' sons Walter and Leonard, referred to in 1194 and 1280; and Henry, son of Leonard, 1240. Roger de Lega, or Guest, brother of Henry, had a son Thomas who again gave lands to Wembridge Priory. In 1295 Adam Gest (another variant of the name) was assessor of the parliamentary rolls in Salop.

Guest (album)

Guest is the first studio album by Critters Buggin of Seattle, Washington and was released in 1994 on Stone Gossard's then new label Loosegroove.Guest was reissued by Kufala Recordings in 2004.

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Personnel

References