L. Frank Baum

A first edition of the book that gave Americans their own fairy tale, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

• L. Frank Baum (American).
• Illustrated by W.W. Denslowe.
• Chicago: George M. Hill, 1900.
• Illustrated pastedowns in black and grey (front) and black and red (rear).
• Signature of Roland Baughman on final leaf.
• Bound in original full green cloth stamped in red and green.
• Housed in a custom quarter morocco clamshell box.

Although it was only one of four books Baum published in 1900, The Wizard Of Oz was his most ambitious as a publication; he and illustrator W.W. Denslow envisioned an elaborate production of color-printed plates to reflect the role that color plays in the story. The expense turned publishers away until Baum and Denslow took the gamble to pay for the printing costs themselves. Their instinct was right: the book quickly became the fastest selling children's book in the United States, and was soon turned into a sensation at the theater. Denslow and Baum would soon part acrimoniously over the share of the profits (Denslow purchased, no joke, an island from his); the rest of the Oz books in Baum's lifetime were illustrated by John R. Neill.

Baum has a complicated legacy: he was also a newspaperman whose opinions on Native American rights were especially pernicious. The Oz books offered a dream world for the children of Manifest Destiny, emigrating across the West. Yet over the years, Dorothy's journey with her motley friends has proven fertile soil for a variety of new interpretations, including The Wiz (1978) and Wicked (1995), demonstrating its power as a modern mythos. The original story may surprise readers, with silver shoes instead of ruby slippers, and an Emerald City that is green only because the visitors must wear colored goggles.

The book's bibliography is notoriously complicated, with more than a dozen different points, and the appearance of mixed states common. This copy contains two corrected plates, but the text entirely matches the first state. It comes from the library of Roland Baughman, a noted Baum collector, scholar and head of Special Collections at Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1967. His Baum collection was exhibited in 1956 at Columbia and he co-edited the accompanying exhibition catalogue with Joan Baum. This is a wonderful copy of an iconic children's book.