INTRODUCTION
by Richard H. Minear
Dr. Seuss (Theodor
Seuss Geisel, 1904-1991) was a life-long cartoonist: in high school
in Springfield, Massachusetts; in college at Dartmouth (Class of 1925);
as an adman in New York City before World War II; in his many children's
books, beginning with To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street (1937).
Because of the fame of his children's books (and because we often misunderstand
these books) and because his political cartoons have remained largely
unknown, we do not think of Dr. Seuss as a political cartoonist. But
for two years, 1941-1943, he was the chief editorial cartoonist for
the New York newspaper PM (1940-1948), and for that journal he
drew over 400 editorial cartoons.
The Dr. Seuss
Collection in the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University
of California, San Diego, contains the original drawings and/or newspaper
clippings of all of these cartoons. This website makes these cartoons
available to all internet users. The cartoons have been scanned from
the original newspaper clippings in the UCSD collection.
Dr. Seuss
Goes to War by historian Richard H. Minear (The New Press, 1999)
reproduced some two hundred of the PM cartoons. That means that
two hundred of the cartoons available here have received no airing or
study since their original appearance in PM. The cartoons Dr.
Seuss published in other journals are even less known; there is no mention
of them in Dr. Seuss Goes to War. Dr. Seuss also drew a set of
war bonds "cartoons" which appeared in many newspapers as
well as in PM. They are the following: