Background
Helen Marion Palmer was born in New York in 1898 and spent her childhood in Bedford–Stuyvesant, a prosperous Brooklyn neighborhood. Her father, George Howard Palmer, was an ophthalmologist, and he died when she was 11.
Helen Marion Palmer was born in New York in 1898 and spent her childhood in Bedford–Stuyvesant, a prosperous Brooklyn neighborhood. Her father, George Howard Palmer, was an ophthalmologist, and he died when she was 11.
She graduated from Wellesley College with honors in 1920.
Her best-known books include Do 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, and A Fish Out of Water. As a child, she contracted polio but recovered from it almost completely. She met Ted Geisel, who was five years younger than her, at Oxford University.
She had a profound influence on his life, starting with her suggestion that he should be an artist rather than an English professor
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." They married in 1927 and never had children, as Helen was unable to
Following World World War II, Ted worked in Hollywood expanding his propaganda films into films for general release.
Radio-Keith-Orpheum commissioned him to adapt his Your Job in Japan. He brought Helen on as a collaborator and the two shared a writing cartulary-register Foreign about a decade following World World War II, Ted Geisel worked to feed a booming children"s book market, creating a bevy of books
During this period, he relied heavily on the encouragement and editorial input of Helen.
In fact, throughout much of his career, he relied on her support. Illness and suicide
Geisel died by suicide in 1967 with an overdose of barbiturates after a series of illnesses (including cancer) spanning 13 years.
Geisel was also despondent over her husband"s burgeoning relationship with Audrey Stone Dimond. Feeling unable to live without him, Helen Geisel 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.."
Her husband later described his reaction to her death: "I didn"t know whether to kill myself, burn the house down, or just go away and get lost." About Helen"s death, Ted"s niece Peggy commented: "Whatever Helen did, she did it out of absolute love for Ted." Peggy called Helen"s death "her last and greatest gift to him.".