A Biography of Dr Seuss

This biography of Dr Seuss explores the life of one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time. Dr Seuss contributed over 60 children’s books to the fantasy genre, including The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Real name: Theodor Seuss Geisel
Pen names: Dr Seuss, Theo. LeSieg and Rosetta Stone
Born: 2 March 1904 in Springfield Massachusetts, USA
Died: 24 September 1991 in San Diego, California, USA
Notable works: Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hears a Who

A biography of Dr Seuss: Master of imagination

Theodor Seuss Geisel, best known by his commonly used pen name, Dr Seuss, was a creative genius. He was a gifted writer and wrote some of the most popular children's books of all time. He was an illustrator and cartoonist, widely know for expressing his political views through a series of controversial cartoons during World War II.

He was a filmmaker and worked on several award-winning movies, including the Academy-Award-winning documentary Design for Death. He will go down in history as one of the most original and imaginative writers of all time. That’s why any biography of Dr Seuss has to begin and end with his writing career.

As a teenager Geisel attentended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he earned his writing chops working for the college humor magazine, Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern. His career almost came to a halt when college leaders caught him throwing a drinking party that was against Prohibition Laws at the time. They banned him from all extracurricular activities, including his journalistic work. However, Geisel continued writing for the magazine but to avoid detection did so under the pen name, Seuss.

Geisel climbed the ranks at Dartmouth Jack-O-Latern and eventually became the magazine's editor-in-chief. Six months after graduating, he started writing for another humor magazine. He kept his pen name but added the ‘Dr’ in tribute to his father’s hopes that Geisel would go to Oxford and earn a doctorate. Geisel did go to Lincoln College in Oxford to study Literature but he returned to the US without completing his degree – not that that had any negative impact on his later career.

His stint at Oxford wasn't entirely wasted . It was there that Geisel met his first wife, Helen Palmer, who he married in 1927. Sadly the marriage ended in tragedy, with Palmer committing suicide while suffering from a debilitating illness 40 years later. Geisel remarried a year later but, despite his devotion to children's literature, never had any children of his own.

Geisel wrote his first children’s book, And to Think That I saw it on Mulberry Street, in 1937. But he didn’t make children’s literature the focal point of his career until he moved to California after the war. In 1954 a magazine article set the scene for Geisel's remaining career.

Geisel's editor at the time read an article in Life Magazine that said most children were not learning to read because their books were boring. He made a list of words he felt were essential to every child and asked Geisel to write a book using only those words. Geisel happily obliged and wrote The Cat in the Hat using fewer than 250 words from the list. The book was a huge success and motivated Dr Seuss to compose many more works that children with limited reading skills could enjoy.

No biography of Dr Seuss can fail to acknowledge the popularity of Dr Seuss’s work. Geisel wrote in rhyme, frequently using a verse rhythm called trisyllabic meter to bring to life a range of colorful characters, elaborate story worlds and original plot lines. And he often created his own drawings to illustrate his works.

His 60-plus children’s books have been published in over 15 languages and sold over 220 million copies worldwide. They have inspired other books, movies and theatrical performances. Filmmakers have even turned three of them, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, The Cat in the Hat and Horton Hears a Who! into feature-length films. And Dr Seuss' books have given the world a wealth of wit, wonder and wisdom, reflected in these ten Dr Seuss quotes.

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