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Summary
Summary
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the quintessential American fairy tale. Michael Patrick Hearn, the world's leading Oz scholar, now provides a fascinating new annotation that not only reacquaints readers with the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion, but also illuminates the colorful background of this treasured American classic. This edition explores numerous contemporary references, provides character sources, and explains the actual meaning of the word "Oz." A facsimile of the rare 1900 first edition appears with the original drawings by W.W. Denslow, as well as 25 previously unpublished illustrations. There is a bibliography of L. Frank Baum's published work, every notable "Oz" edition, and the stage and cinematic productions from 1939's The Wizard of Oz, to the 1974 Broadway hit, The Wiz. A beautiful, awe-inspiring work, The Annotated Wizard of Oz is an enduring tribute to the timeless joy of The Wizard of Oz, and a classic to rival Baum's own.
Author Notes
Best known as the author of the Wizard of Oz series, Lyman Frank Baum was born on May 15, 1856, in New York. When Baum was a young man, his father, who had made a fortune in oil, gave him several theaters in New York and Pennsylvania to manage. Eventually, Baum had his first taste of success as a writer when he staged The Maid of Arran, a melodrama he had written and scored.
Married in 1882 to Maud Gage, whose mother was an influential suffragette, the two had four sons. Baum often entertained his children with nursery rhymes and in 1897 published a compilation titled Mother Goose in Prose, which was illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. The project was followed by three other picture books of rhymes, illustrated by William Wallace Denslow.
The success of the nursery rhymes persuaded Baum to craft a novel out of one of the stories, which he titled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Some critics have suggested that Baum modeled the character of the Wizard on himself. Other books for children followed the original Oz book, and Baum continued to produce the popular Oz books until his death in 1919. The series was so popular that after Baum's death and by special arrangement, Oz books continued to be written for the series by other authors. Glinda of Oz, the last Oz book that Baum wrote, was published in 1920.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Library Journal Review
We're off to see the Wizard! Many readers of this annotated version of arguably the most famous American fairly tale will be surprised to learn that the 1939 MGM movie musical was based on a best-selling children's book written 100 years ago; far more readers will be astonished to find out that The Wizard was followed by a good 40 sequels, many as popular as the first Oz tale by Baum and illustrator Denslow. This volume reproduces Denslow's color drawings from the first edition (1900) and includes previously unpublished illustrations. Despite the popularity of that work, whose copyright author and illustrator shared, the two never collaborated again. As the self-styled Royal Historian of Oz, Baum went on to write 13 more Oz adventures; his mantel was then passed to Ruth Plumly Thompson, editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger's Sunday children's page, who produced an additional 19 titles. John R. Neill, illustrator of all the Oz books but the first, then wrote three more sequels, and since his death in 1943 (Baum died in 1919), numerous others have tried their hand at an Oz story. So powerful was the book's spell that its Russian translator, Aleksandr Volkov, wrote several sequels of his own in Russian for Soviet citizens. Hearn, described by the publisher as "the world's leading Oz scholar," mines The Wizard in this wide-ranging assay of the multifarious strands that fed the imaginations of Baum and Denslow. His explanations and conjectures are enhanced by commentary from such luminaries as Salman Rushdie and Gore Vidal. Of comparable weight to the annotations are the extensive biographical sketches of Baum and Denslow, which elucidate the era in which the book was conceived. The annotations can wander at times, perhaps unavoidably, into tenuous speculation or somewhat irrelevant asides, yet the book is invaluable in pointing out discrepancies that generations of children have wondered about (why the Munchkins live in the east of in some of the Oz books, at other times in the west). And those who know both book and film will delight in discovering why, e.g., the book's Silver Shoes became the film's Ruby Slippers. Hearn, unlike Martin Gardner, the author of The Annotated Alice (LJ 12/99), had many sequels and a film to treat. His painstaking annotation shows us Baum's Wizard as a whiz of a wiz if ever a wiz there was. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/00.]DEdward Cone, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.