After five Oz books, L. Frank Baum longed to write something else—almost anything else. He had already written a few other fantasy books (Queen Zixi of Ix, John Dough and the Cherub, and The Magical Monarch of Mo) and he had a new heroine in mind, a young girl named Trot. His last Oz book had been filled with cameo appearances from these other books in the hopes of attracting new young readers for them. When that failed, exhaustion—and perhaps a sneaking suspicion that his Oz books were cannibalizing sales of his non-Oz books—led him to make a sweeping end to Oz in The Emerald City of Oz— with an invasion.
Oooh, Ozma is having a birthday party! Can Dorothy and her friends make it in time for the party? Can they? CAN THEY?
It must be confessed from the outset that The Road to Oz does not have much of a plot. (You just read pretty much the entire thing.) But, even plotless, The Road to Oz is one of the most critical books in the development of Oz, since here at last we see the nearly ultimate, persistent version of Oz: Oz as communist utopia.
With fairies!
So you’re an American kid taken to the most perfect fairyland in the world. And you don’t like it.
Now what?
This is one of the major questions posed by Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, the darkest and most troubling of Baum’s Oz books. The book starts with an earthquake, sending Dorothy, her semi-cousin Zeb, his horse Jim, and her kitten Eureka on an unsettling and unpleasant trip through the center of the earth. There, they meet the Wizard and his Nine Tiny Piglets, some coolly unemotional vegetable people who plan to kill them, some considerably pleasanter invisible people and less pleasant invisible bears, wooden Gargoyles, dragons, and a dead end. Suddenly, Dorothy remembers that Ozma could have saved them at any time, and with a secret hand signal, has Ozma bring the group to Oz. The Wizard is warmly welcomed back and given a home, and Ozma throws a few parties.
What do you do when you need to write yet another book about a magical fairyland where everyone has already gotten a happy ending?
Take your characters to another country, of course.
Ozma of Oz represents a radical departure and new direction for the Oz series. Despite the title, it is an Oz book in name only. Most of the book is set outside Oz, in the neighboring lands of Ev and the domains of the Nome King. The final return to Oz has a distinctly anticlimatic tone to it. And despite its title, the book is not really about Ozma either. Depending upon how you read it, the heroine is either Dorothy or Billina the Yellow Hen or both. The move gave Baum the freedom he needed for a new plot, while allowing him to continue featuring beloved characters like the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, guaranteeing book sales while opening up dramatic opportunities.
Buoyed by the unexpected success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and brimming with hopes for additional revenue from stage and other adaptations, Baum rushed merrily into writing a sequel, The Marvelous Land of Oz. The result is one of the most seamless of the Oz books, with few of the digressions that litter the other books, and a rollicking farce.
And also, a rather problematic book for feminists. But we’ll get to that.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz appeared a little over a century ago, spawning at least 200 sequels (some authorized, some not, some with marvelous titles like The Haunted Hot-Tub of Oz); a little film you might have heard of; several other films of greater or lesser inspiration; a couple of musicals; plenty of comics; a delightful collection of toys, calendars, games and more.
And still, more people are familiar with the movie than with the book, which is a pity, since the original book and series are among the most original works in American literature. And phenomenally lucrative, for everyone except L. Frank Baum, the creator, helping to establish the commercially successful genres of fantasy and children’s literature. The books also inadvertently helped to spawn the production of long running fantasy series—inadvertently, because Baum had no plans to create a series when he sat down to write the first book. (This helps account for the myriad inconsistencies that pop up in later books.)
So what’s in the book, you might ask?
