It must be the season for posthumous anthologies of treats by beloved children's authors. After Shel Silverstein's Every Thing Thing On It comes The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories -- a fantastic new collection of seven rarely seen stories written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss, published in magazines between 1948 and 1959. But what's even more remarkable than the book itself is the story of how it came to be.
In 2001, "dentist by profession and Seussologist by obsession" Charles Cohen, discovered the first of these lost stories in vintage magazines on eBay and set out to find the rest, eventually acquiring multiple copies of some. He then started listing these extra copies on eBay, noting the lost Seuss stories they contained. The listings caught the eye of Random House art director Cathy Goldsmith, who had worked on books with Seuss himself. The rest was history.
In the '50s, and in the '40s before that, this was the place where Fitzgerald and Hemingway tried out stuff in short stories in magazines. And Ted was among them. This is the point at which Dr. Seuss is becoming Dr. Seuss.
More than just a literary gem, which it certainly is, The Bippolo Seed is also a wonderful embodiment of two of today's most beautiful phenomena: the notion that anyone with a passion and a vision can leave an imprint on culture, as Cohen did in discovering these buried treasures, and the power of a great, curious curator in bringing that vision to the forefront of culture, as Goldsmith did in discovering Cohen.
Images: Random House.
This post also appears on Brain Pickings.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.