Dr. Seuss: The Great American Childrens Poet

Dr. Seuss: The Great American Children's Poet


     Dr. Seuss is the pseudonym for Theodor Seuss Geisel III, Ted Geisel to

his friends. He originally thought of his pen name being pronounced zo-oice

which is the German pronunciation. He took his middle name from his mother's

maiden name.


     He was born in 1904 to Theodor Jr. and Henrietta Geisel of Springfiel

Massachusetts. Both sets of grandparents were from Germany. Theodor Jr. was a

wealthy brewer and tavern owner until the Prohibition. Then he worked as the

manager of the Springfield Zoo. Ted also had an older sister named Marnie. He

went to college at Dartmouth and graduate school at Oxford. While at Dartmouth

he got into a bit of trouble when the police arrested him for drinking. (This

was during the Prohibition.) As punishment he was kicked off the school magazine,

The Jack O'Lantern, to which he contributed as a cartoonist. To get around the

rule he began to sign his work as Dr. Seuss. And that is why Ted Geisel became

Dr. Seuss. While at Oxford he met his first wife Helen Palmer to whom he was

married for 40 years until her death. They moved to New York. While in New York

he worked drawing cartoon advertisments for Flit, an insect repellant. It was he

who coined the phrase “Quick Henry, the Flit” which was to 1930s advertising

what “Just Do It” is to 1990s advertising. Sort of.


     They later moved to La Jolla, California where Ted lived for the rest of

his life. They loved children although they were unable to have any of their own.

About five years after Helem's death he married Audrey Stone. He died in 1991 in

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