Today, The Wizard of Oz is mostly famous as a beloved movie starring Judy Garland, which was first released in 1939. However, that movie only came after almost four decades of Oz books – imaginative “fairy stories” that were as popular as Harry Potter in their day.
L. Frank Baum was a father of four sons, a failed actor, a general store owner, a crockery salesman, and an expert in Hamburg chickens. He was 44 years old when he published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900. It was not his first book for children, but its success led him to focus on writing for kids for the rest of his life. He published many more fantasy novels, including a total of 14 Oz books, before his death in 1919.
After Baum’s death, his publishers hired another young writer, Ruth Plumly Thompson, to continue them. She added 19 more before retiring in 1939. The publishers kept going, but various factors slowed the series down in the mid-1940s. The final “official” Oz book was published in 1963; together, there are 40 of them in all. Fans refer to these as The Famous Forty.
Although the stories themselves were justly famous, in the United States they were accompanied by art that is just as beloved by fans. Graphic artist W.W. Denslow illustrated The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900; illustrator John R. Neill replaced him for the next 35 Oz books, from 1904-1942. Later artists, including Dale Ulrey (in the 1950s), Dick Martin (in the 1960s and ’70s), and Eric Shanower (in the 1980s and ’90s), often adapted Neill’s character designs with an approach contemporary for their times. Only Skottie Young, in the award-winning Marvel Comics adaptations of the first six books (2009-15), has almost totally left Neill’s legacy behind.
23 of the “famous forty” Oz books are now out of copyright and in the public domain. (Those by L. Frank Baum can be read here.) Fans have been writing and publishing their own original Oz stories since the 1970s – and yes, they’ve been illustrating them, too! Despite the books falling out of mainstream popularity, Baum’s original 14 have never been out of print in the USA, and several of them are available throughout the world in different languages.
Oz Student Art Contest 