Audrey Geisel, widow of Dr. Seuss, dead at 97

Audrey Geisel, widow of famed children's book author Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles, on March 11, 2004. (Reed Saxon / AP)

NEW YORK -- Audrey Geisel, the widow of children's author Dr. Seuss and longtime overseer of his literary estate, has died.

Random House Children's Books announced that she died Wednesday at age 97. She died "peacefully" at her home in La Jolla, California.

Dr. Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Geisel, died in 1991 and two years later Audrey Geisel founded Dr. Seuss Enterprises. Numerous publishing projects followed, along with the Broadway show "Seussical." She also served as executive producer for some film adaptations of his work, most recently "The Grinch," which came out last month.

She was a Chicago native whose parents broke up when she was little and who as an adult would be in the middle of two broken marriages. She and Theodor Geisel, who was 17 years older, were both married to others when they began an affair in the 1960s. Theodor Geisel's first wife, Helen, killed herself and Audrey Geisel sent away the two daughters she had with her first husband after she and the author married in 1968.

"They wouldn't have been happy with Ted, and Ted wouldn't have been happy with them. He's the man who said of children, 'You have 'em and I'll entertain 'em,"' she told The New York Times in 2000. "Ted's a hard man to break down, but this is who he was. He lived his whole life without children and he was very happy without children. I've never been very maternal. There were too many other things I wanted to do. My life with him was what I wanted my life to be."