celebrity.estateAn EGRET.LAW propertyWorld map3D timeline
Home / Literature and art / The author of Goodnight Moon left her royalties to a neighbour's nine-year-old son, who…
Case file s191 · Literature and art · 1952
See 1952 on the timelineSee it in 3D
1952
Died
13 November 1952
Place
Nice, France
Field
children's author · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
New York law; US copyright law · Common law
Historical event
Post-war baby boom in children's publishing
Literature and artPostwarEuropeFrance
AI illustration: A picture book left open on a windowsill above the harbour at Nice, 1952
Illustration made with AI for celebrity.estate.

The author of Goodnight Moon left her royalties to a neighbour's nine-year-old son, who spent the millions

Margaret Wise Brown wrote Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. Her partner from 1940, Blanche Oelrichs, who wrote as Michael Strange, died in 1950. In 1952 she was engaged to James "Pebble" Rockefeller and planned to marry him in Panama. In Nice she had surgery for an ovarian cyst or a ruptured appendix. Shortly after, she kicked up her leg to show the doctor how well she felt and died of an embolism, aged 42. Her will left the royalties of many books, including Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, to Albert Clarke, the nine-year-old son of a neighbour. He later believed Brown was his mother, a claim others dismiss. According to a 2000 Wall Street Journal report by Joshua Prager, he squandered the millions the books earned him. Goodnight Moon has sold tens of millions of copies†. Clarke died in 2018. His four children hold the royalty rights, which expire in 2043.

What the law took from it

A bequest of royalties to a child, with no trust or trustee, hands a lifetime income to someone with no training to manage it.

Sources
  1. The New YorkerScholarship
  2. joshuaprager.comPress
  3. newrepublic.comPress
  4. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “The author of Goodnight Moon left her royalties to a neighbour's nine-year-old son, who spent the millions,” story s191, https://www.celebrity.estate/the-author-of-goodnight-moon-left-1952, updated 30 October 2026.

Related cases

Each one shares a person, a kind of fight, a subject, a period or a place with this case. The line under each headline says which.

Agatha Christie: Agatha Christie in Nederland (detectiveschrijfster), bij aankomst op Schiphol me, Bestanddeelnr 916-8898 (cropped)1976 · Wallingford, EnglandAgatha Christie gave her grandson the rights to The Mousetrap as a child, and the company holding her estate was sold three timesShared: also Literature and art; 24 years apart; also EuropeAgatha Christie gave her grandson Mathew Prichard the rights to The Mousetrap as a birthday present when he was a child. Her estate's site says he was nine, in 1952; another source says seven.agathachristie.com and 3 moreGeorge Orwell: George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair (1903 - 1950), an English writer born in British India. On of his first jobs was acting as imperial police office1950 · University College Hospital, LondonGeorge Orwell married Sonia Brownell in a hospital in October 1949 and died in January 1950; his estate's accountant ran his rights until she sued in 1979Shared: also Literature and art; 2 years apart; also EuropeGeorge Orwell, 46, married Sonia Brownell, a literary editor about 15 years younger, on 13 October 1949 at University College Hospital, where he was being treated for tuberculosis.washingtonmonthly.com and 3 morePablo Picasso: Pablo picasso 11973 · Mougins, FrancePicasso died with no will and about 43,000 works, and the French state took its tax in paintingsShared: also Literature and art; 21 years apart; also EuropePicasso died at 91 at Mougins. He left no will. The auctioneer Maurice Rheims counted 1,885 paintings, more than 1,200 sculptures, about 7,000 drawings, 3,222 ceramics and about 30,000 prints.Internet Archive and 3 moreC. S. Lewis: CS Lewis photo on dust jacket1963 · Oxford, EnglandA Lewis scholar says he saved C. S. Lewis's papers from a bonfire; a critic charged in 1988 that the story and an unfinished novel were a hoaxShared: also Literature and art; 11 years apart; also EuropeAfter C. S. Lewis died in 1963, his brother Warren Lewis held his papers.christianitytoday.com and 2 moreSylvia Plath1963 · LondonSylvia Plath died separated but not divorced, so Ted Hughes inherited her work and destroyed her last journalShared: also Literature and art; 11 years apart; also EuropePlath and Hughes separated in October 1962. She died in London in February 1963, aged 30. The inquest found suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.nybooks.com and 3 moreIan Fleming: Ian Fleming c. 1958 (cropped)1964 · Canterbury, EnglandIan Fleming had two heart attacks during the Thunderball trial, settled, and died nine months laterShared: also Literature and art; 12 years apart; also EuropeFleming worked with the producer Kevin McClory and the screenwriter Jack Whittingham on a Bond film script that was never made. Fleming then published the novel Thunderball in 1961.Wikipedia (English) and 2 more

Where this case sits

Literature and artPostwarEuropeCommon lawFrance