‘Grinch’ who guarded Dr Seuss legacy

Audrey Geisel, who has died aged 97, was the widow of Dr Seuss (Theodor Geisel) – author of such children’s books as The Cat in the Hat and The Grinch who Stole Christmas – and the assiduous stoker of the flame of his legacy.

Their first meeting was unpropitious. Both were then married to other people, Audrey Dimond (as she then was) being a teacher of nursing and the wife of a cardiologist. When, in the early 1960s, she was introduced in a lineup to ‘‘our Dr Seuss’’, she assumed he was a colleague of her husband’s, possibly an ENT doctor, and asked which his speciality was – the right or left nostril?

Nonplussed as Ted Geisel was by this, the two families soon became fast friends, being near-neighbours in La Jolla, an upmarket suburb of San Diego. Ted had been married since 1927 to fellow writer Helen Palmer, but he and Audrey Dimond embarked on an affair and in 1967 Helen Palmer committed suicide, leaving a poignant note that began: ‘‘Dear Ted, What has happened to us?’’ He and Dimond married nine months later. The Geisels had been unable to have children and Audrey now sent her two daughters, aged 9 and 14, away to school. She revealed in later years that Ted Geisel was somewhat unnerved by children. ‘‘You have ’em, I’ll entertain ’em’’ was one of his quips.

For her part, she had never felt very maternal. She saw her role as being Geisel’s helpmate and sounding board. Stating that his ‘‘juices were getting diluted’’, she encouraged him in later books, such as The Lorax (1971), to expand his colour palette and to use themes (among them environmentalism) that spoke as much to parents as children.

Geisel died in 1991, leaving Audrey to oversee his estate. This she did with energy. Those who presumed to breach the Seuss copyright – selling T-shirts depicting the Cat in the Hat smoking cannabis, for instance – were invariably sued. Audrey Geisel herself drove a Cadillac with the number plate GR1NCH.

She took a particular interest in theatrical and cinematic productions of the books. So much had she disliked Mike Myers as the Cat in the Hat in 2003 that she reputedly forbade any other live films of her husband’s work.

Much of the wealth generated she redistributed, giving millions to the medical school at Dartmouth College, Geisel’s alma mater, and to the library building of the University of California at San Diego.

She is survived by her two daughters. – Telegraph Group Audrey Geisel

b August 14, 1921 d December 19, 2018