Helen Palmer Geisel | |
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 Palmer in 1924 | |
| Born | Helen Marion Palmer (1898-09-16)September 16, 1898 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | October 23, 1967(1967-10-23) (aged 69) La Jolla, California, U.S. |
| Pen name | Helen Palmer |
| Occupation | Children's book author, editor,screenwriter, Founder and Vice President ofBeginner Books |
| Alma mater | Wellesley College |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Notable works |
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Helen Marion Palmer Geisel (September 16, 1898 – October 23, 1967), known professionally asHelen Palmer, was an American children's writer, editor, and philanthropist. She was a co-founder and vice president ofBeginner Books, and was married to fellow writer Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known asDr. Seuss, from 1927 until her death. Her best-known books includeDo You Know What I'm Going to Do Next Saturday?,I Was Kissed by a Seal at the Zoo,Why I Built the Boogle House, andA Fish Out of Water. She died by suicide on October 23, 1967.
Helen Palmer was born inNew York City in 1898 and spent her childhood inBedford–Stuyvesant, a prosperousBrooklyn neighborhood. As a child, she contractedpolio, but recovered from it almost completely. Her father, George Howard Palmer, anophthalmologist, died when she was 11.
She graduated fromWellesley College with honors in 1920.[1] She then spent three years teaching English atGirls High School in Brooklyn before moving with her mother to England to attendOxford University.[2]
She met her future husband,Ted Geisel, in class at Oxford.[3][4] She had a profound influence on his life, starting with her suggestion that he should be an artist rather than an English professor.[5] She later stated, "Ted's notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals. So I set to work diverting him; here was a man who could draw such pictures; he should be earning a living doing that."[5] They married in 1927. She could not have children because of medical conditions.[6]
FollowingWorld War II, she worked in Hollywood with her husband. The two shared the writing credit onDesign for Death, which won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[7][8]
For the next decade, she was the primary source of encouragement for and was an editor of her husband's prolific books for children, even as her health worsened.[3] She was an uncredited author for many of her husband's products.[4]
Palmer, along with husbandTheodor Geisel, andPhyllis Cerf, wife ofBennett Cerf, co-foundedBeginner Books in 1958, following the smash success ofThe Cat in the Hat byDr. Seuss in 1957. Geisel served as President and Palmer as Vice President.[9] Palmer contributed four of her own books to the imprint:A Fish Out of Water,I Was Kissed by A Seal at the Zoo,Do You Know What I'm Going to Do Next Saturday?, andWhy I Built the Boogle House.
Palmer died bysuicide with anoverdose ofbarbiturates on October 23, 1967,[10] after a series of illnesses spanning 13 years.[citation needed] She wrote in her suicide note:
Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down, into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, "failure, failure, failure..." I love you so much ... I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... My going will leave quite a rumor but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed ... Sometimes, think of the fun we had all thru the years ...[11]
Eight months later, in August 1968, Seuss marriedAudrey Dimond, with whom he had been having an affair.[10]
Nonetheless, Seuss later described how he felt at her death: "I didn't know whether to kill myself, burn the house down, or just go away and get lost."[11] His niece Peggy commented: "Whatever Helen did, she did it out of absolute love for Ted." Secretary Julie Olfe called Palmer's death "her last and greatest gift to him."[11]
Helen Palmer's best-known book isDo You Know What I'm Going To Do Next Saturday?, published in 1963. This book combined Palmer's stories with photographs by Lynn Fayman, as did two other books:I Was Kissed by a Seal at the Zoo (1962) andWhy I Built the Boogle House (1964). The photographs inI Was Kissed by a Seal at the Zoo were taken at theSan Diego Zoo inBalboa Park,San Diego,California, and featured children from theFrancis Parker School in San Diego interacting with the zoo's animals and staff.
She also expanded the Dr. Seuss short story "Gustav the Goldfish," originally published inRedbook, into the bookA Fish Out of Water (1961), which was illustrated byP. D. Eastman.[12] In 2012,A Fish Out of Water was included in theBeginner Books anthologyThe Big Purple Book of Beginner Books.[13]
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