Judith and Neil Morgan were neighbors of Ted Geisel in the second half of his life, traveling with him and spending many days and evenings with him in the later years of his life. Months before his death, when they told him they intended to write his biography, he seemed stunned.
A man given to extremes of humility and naivete in personal matters but sophistication in worldly issues, he seemed astonished that there would be a biography. When Judith and Neil Morgan told him they considered it might well be the most important contribution of their lives as writers, tears moistened his eyes.
“Do you two really believe that?” he asked, but soon began digging out unpublished cartoons and a trove of personal letters. A year of jolly (and often mystifying) interviews began, racing against his worsening health. They were unlike any other interviews the authors, both journalists, had conducted. But then, both Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel were unlike any others.
Because of their arrangement with Ted that day, the Morgans alone have had full access to Geisel’s voluminous papers and sketches. In this book they merge their decades-long intimacies with Ted Geisel with exhaustive, scholarly research, and a lot of fun. They offer a look inside the mind of an artistic genius. They draw from hundreds of letters and interviews with childhood and college friends, and from Geisel’s notes for an unpublished “non-autobiography”.
They illuminate his relationship with both of his wives, dwelling on an astonishing interlude which led to tragedy and the suicide of his first wife Helen, his companion and editor since their college days at Oxford.
Rarest of all, the authors spend hours with him as he works, with all three of them striving, often hilariously, to examine the creative processes that brought the world of Dr. Seuss.
“I didn’t miss the opportunity of a lifetime. I worked with Dr. Seuss. Reading the Morgans’ warm and thoughtful biography was like being with him again.”
--Chuck Jones
“This biography answers all the questions for those of us in cartooning who admire his work. It is a real treasure."
--Charles M. Schulz
“How lucky Ted Geisel was to meet Judith and Neil Morgan. They have written a biography that will stand as a classic.”
--James A. Michener
“Engaging biography neatly woven with little-known facts, obscure Seuss doggerel…and such tragic articles as Helen Geisel’s suicide note.”
--Los Angeles Times
For excerpts from the book, go to
judithmorgan.net
