Photograph from Wikimedia Commons
One of the true classics of American literature, The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz was originally published in 1900. L. Frank Baum crafted a wonderful magical land with a cornfield scarecrow, a mechanical woodman, and a humbug wizard who used old-fashioned hokum to express that universal theme: “There’s no place like home.”
The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz has illustrations by William Wallace Denslow. It was an instant hit. The book can be taken as an allusion to the politics of the USA in the late 1800s. Baum created the Land of Oz as a distinctly American utopia, making it the first truly American fairytale.
Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto, have their Kansas house swept away by a cyclone and they find themselves in a strange land called Oz. She meets the Munchkins and joins the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion on an unforgettable journey to the Emerald City, home of the all-powered Wizard of Oz.
As a young man, Baum was an actor and playwright. He wrote several plays that were successfully produced and in which he acted. The only time that Baum was known to have been in Kansas was when he toured in one of his plays in 1882.
Photograph from Wikimedia Commons
In 1882, Baum married Maud Gage, daughter of the noted feminist and suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage. His relationship with his mother-in-law and wife, nudged him become a lifelong suffragist and feminist. In fact, most of his books had girls as the heroes.
Baum’s original title for the book was The Emerald City, but his publishers felt that a jewel in a book title was bad luck and asked Baum to change it. Baum got the name for his fairy country off a drawer on a file cabinet that was marked O-Z.
Baum wrote 14 Oz books, with a new book usually coming out in time for Christmas. In his later years, he answered children’s letters on letterhead that proclaimed him as the “Royal Historian of Oz”. He used suggestions from children when creating the Oz books. The series was continued after his death by Ruth Plumly Thompson, who wrote an additional 19 Oz books, and a series of other authors added seven more.
Baum left this world in 1919 after suffering a stroke. Just before he passed, he had some interesting last words. In his books, the land of Oz is cut off from the rest of the world by impassable wastelands, including a desert called the Shifting Sands. As Baum was breathing his last breath, he whispered to his wife: “Now we can cross the Shifting Sands”.
The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz has never been out of print.
