Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss was the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904 to 1991), an American writer and illustrator of children's books, born in Springfield, Massachusetts, whose titles include The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.

Geisel began as a cartoonist, contributing to the humour magazine Judge from 1927 and drawing long-running advertisements for Flit insect spray, and during the Second World War he drew political cartoons for the New York newspaper PM. His first children's book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected by many publishers (his own counts varied from 20 to 29) before Vanguard Press published it on 21 December 1937. The Cat in the Hat (1957), written with only 236 different words in response to a 1954 Life magazine article on how children learn to read, led to the founding of Beginner Books with Phyllis Cerf; Random House bought the imprint in 1960. How the Grinch Stole Christmas! also appeared in 1957 and Green Eggs and Ham in 1960. He received a special Pulitzer Prize citation in 1984 and died in San Diego on 24 September 1991. In March 2021 Dr. Seuss Enterprises stopped publishing six of his books, including Mulberry Street, because of the way they depict people.

For collectors

The Cat in the Hat came out in two 1957 editions: a school edition from Houghton Mifflin and the Random House trade edition, which differ in their covers. A first edition dust jacket carries the price "200/200" at the top of the front flap. Vanguard's first printing of Mulberry Street (1937) ran to 15,000 copies, with a second printing of 6,000 about two years later.