Before there was Dr. Seuss there was Theodore Geisel. The name Seuss was Geisel’s mother’s maiden name and his decision to use it as his nom de plume, or pen name came from an incident in college. While at Dartmouth during the early days of prohibition Geisel was caught drinking in his room with fellow classmates. As a punishment he was forced to quit any extracurricular activities that he was a part of.  This included his editor position at The Dartmouth Jack-o-Lantern, the school’s humor magazine. To continue submitting work for publishment in the magazine Geisel began using the moniker Seuss. “’To what extent that corny subterfuge fooled the dean, I never found out,’ Ted said. ‘But that’s how ‘Seuss’ first came to be used as my signature,’” (Biography, 2026).

Before his time as a college student, Geisel’s childhood was spent in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was the second child to German immigrants born in 1904 and grew up close to his older sister Margaretha, Marnie for short. His parents supported his artistic endeavors, “early on, Ted’s mother became his ‘accomplice in crime,’ encouraging him to draw animal caricatures on the plaster walls of his bedroom,” (Biography, 2026). Despite his friends and family supporting him his high school art teacher did not. “Geisel once turned a painting upside down to see how it looked. His art teacher thought Geisel was not taking art seriously and advised him to try a career in another field,” (Koehler, 2023).

Luckily, Geisel did not take her suggestion seriously and continued to develop as an artist and writer. After college at Dartmouth Geisel went on to attend Oxford University. There he met his first wife, Helen Palmer. They married “on November 27, 1927, and she became his collaborator and editor,” (Koehler, 2023). The summer before they married Geisel was living in New York with a college friend John C. Rose who “brokered an interview for Ted with the editor [of Judge magazine], Norman Anthony. Recognized in New York for knowing talent when he saw it, Anthony offered Ted the job that jump-started his career,” (Biography, 2026). This stable job, after experiencing months of rejections, made the marriage possible.

  It was nearly 10 years before Geisel’s, or Seuss’s, first children’s book was published. And To Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street was rejected by 12 different publishers before “a chance brush with a publisher and former Dartmouth classmate on the street,” (Reimann, 2020). Seuss went on to write and illustrate over 60 children’s books throughout his career.  He continued his love of art by not only illustrating his books but also creating Surrealist paintings and drawings and sculpting a collection known as Unorthodox Taxidermy. Seuss’s legacy lives on today. His work will continue to be enjoyed by children and adults for years to come.