= The_Wonderful_Wizard_of

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= The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz =
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Introduction
======================================================================
'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' is a 1900 children's novel written by
author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It is the first
novel in the Oz series of books. A Kansas farm girl named Dorothy ends
up in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept
away from their home by a cyclone. Upon her arrival in the magical
world of Oz, she learns she cannot return home until she has destroyed
the Wicked Witch of the West.

The book was first published in the United States in September 1900 by
the George M. Hill Company. It had sold three million copies by the
time it entered the public domain in 1956. It was often reprinted
under the title 'The Wizard of Oz', which is the title of the
successful 1902 Broadway musical adaptation as well as the 1939
live-action film.

The ground-breaking success of both the original 1900 novel and the
1902 musical prompted Baum to write thirteen additional Oz books,
which serve as official sequels to the first story. Over a century
later, the book is one of the best-known stories in American
literature, and the Library of Congress has declared the work to be
"America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale".

Publication
======================================================================
L. Frank Baum's story was published by George M. Hill Company. The
first edition had a printing of 10,000 copies and was sold in advance
of the publication date of September 1, 1900. On May 17, 1900, the
first copy came off the press; Baum assembled it by hand and presented
it to his sister, Mary Louise Baum Brewster. The public saw it for the
first time at a book fair at the Palmer House in Chicago, July 5-20.
Its copyright was registered on August 1; full distribution followed
in September. By October 1900, the first edition had already sold out,
and the second edition of 15,000 copies was nearly depleted.

In a letter to his brother, Baum wrote that the book's publisher,
George M. Hill, predicted a sale of about 250,000 copies. In spite of
this favorable conjecture, Hill did not initially predict that the
book would be phenomenally successful. He agreed to publish the book
only when the manager of the Chicago Grand Opera House, Fred R.
Hamlin, committed to making it into a musical stage play to publicize
the novel.

The play 'The Wizard of Oz' debuted on June 16, 1902. It was revised
to suit adult preferences and was crafted as a "musical extravaganza",
with the costumes modeled after Denslow's drawings. When Hill's
publishing company became bankrupt in 1901, the Indianapolis-based
Bobbs-Merrill Company resumed publishing the novel. By 1938, more than
one million copies of the book had been printed. By 1956, sales had
grown to three million copies.

Plot
======================================================================
Dorothy Gale is a young girl who lives with her Aunt Em, Uncle Henry,
and dog, Toto, on a farm on the Kansas prairie. One day, Dorothy and
Toto are caught up in a "cyclone" (more accurately a tornado) that
deposits them and the farmhouse into Munchkin Country in the magical
Land of Oz. The falling house has killed the Wicked Witch of the East,
the evil ruler of the Munchkins. The Good Witch of the North arrives
with three grateful Munchkins and gives Dorothy the magical silver
shoes that originally belonged to the Wicked Witch. The Good Witch
tells Dorothy that the only way she can return home to Kansas is to
follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and ask the great and
powerful Wizard of Oz to help her. As Dorothy embarks on her journey,
the Good Witch of the North kisses her on the forehead, giving her
magical protection from harm.

On her way down the yellow brick road, Dorothy attends a banquet held
by a Munchkin named Boq. The next day, she frees a Scarecrow from the
pole on which he is hanging, applies oil from a can to the rusted
joints of a Tin Woodman, and meets a Cowardly Lion. The Scarecrow
wants a brain, the Tin Woodman wants a heart, and the Lion wants
courage, so Dorothy encourages them to journey with her and Toto to
the Emerald City to ask for help from the Wizard.

After several adventures, the travelers arrive at the Emerald City and
meet the Guardian of the Gates, who asks them to wear green tinted
spectacles to keep their eyes from being blinded by the city's
brilliance. Each one is called to see the Wizard. He appears to
Dorothy as a giant head, to the Scarecrow as a lovely lady, to the Tin
Woodman as a terrible beast, and to the Lion as a ball of fire, with
the intention of scaring them all. He agrees to help them all if they
kill the Wicked Witch of the West, who rules over Winkie Country. The
Guardian warns them that no one has ever managed to defeat the Witch
of the West.

The Wicked Witch of the West sees the travelers approaching with her
one telescopic eye. She sends a pack of wolves to tear them to pieces,
but the Tin Woodman kills them with his axe. She sends a flock of wild
crows to peck their eyes out, but the Scarecrow kills them by twisting
their necks. She summons a swarm of black bees to sting them, but they
are killed while trying to sting the Tin Woodman while the Scarecrow's
straw hides the others. She sends a dozen of her Winkie slaves to
attack them, but the Lion stands firm to repel them. Finally, she uses
the power of her Golden Cap to send the Winged Monkeys to capture
Dorothy, Toto, and the Lion. She cages the Lion, scatters the straw of
the Scarecrow, and dents the Tin Woodman. Dorothy is forced to become
the witch's personal slave, while the Witch schemes to steal her
silver shoes' powerful magic.

The Wicked Witch melts. First edition illustration by W. W. Denslow.
The witch successfully tricks Dorothy out of one of her silver shoes.
Angered, she throws a bucket of water at the witch and is shocked to
see her melt away. The Winkies rejoice at being freed from her tyranny
and help restuff the Scarecrow and mend the Tin Woodman. They ask the
Tin Woodman to become their ruler, which he agrees to do after helping
Dorothy return to Kansas. Dorothy finds the witch's Golden Cap and
summons the Winged Monkeys to carry her and her friends back to the
Emerald City. The King of the Winged Monkeys tells how he and his band
are bound by an enchantment to the cap by the sorceress Gayelette from
the North, and that Dorothy may use it to summon them two more times.

When Dorothy and her friends meet the Wizard again, Toto tips over a
screen in a corner of the throne room that reveals "the Wizard", who
sadly explains he is a humbug--an ordinary old man who, by a hot air
balloon, came to Oz long ago from Omaha. He provides the Scarecrow
with a head full of bran, pins, and needles ("a lot of bran-new
brains"), the Tin Woodman with a silk heart stuffed with sawdust, and
the Lion a potion of "courage". Their faith in his power gives these
items a focus for their desires. He decides to take Dorothy and Toto
home and then go back to Omaha in his balloon. At the send-off, he
appoints the Scarecrow to rule in his stead, which he agrees to do
after helping Dorothy return to Kansas. Toto chases a kitten in the
crowd and Dorothy goes after him, but the ropes holding the balloon
break and the Wizard floats away.
Dorothy summons the Winged Monkeys and tells them to carry her and
Toto home, but they explain they cannot cross the desert surrounding
Oz. The Soldier with the Green Whiskers informs Dorothy that Glinda,
the Good Witch of the South may be able to help her return home, so
the travelers begin their journey to see Glinda's castle in Quadling
Country. On the way, the Lion kills a giant spider who is terrorizing
the animals in a forest. They ask him to become their king, which he
agrees to do after helping Dorothy return to Kansas. Dorothy summons
the Winged Monkeys a third time to fly them over a hill to Glinda's
castle.

Glinda greets them and reveals that Dorothy's silver shoes can take
her anywhere she wishes to go. She embraces her friends, all of whom
will be returned to their new kingdoms through Glinda's three uses of
the Golden Cap: the Scarecrow to the Emerald City, the Tin Woodman to
Winkie Country, and the Lion to the forest; after which the cap will
be given to the King of the Winged Monkeys, freeing him and his band.
Dorothy takes Toto in her arms, knocks her heels together three times,
and wishes to return home. Instantly, she begins whirling through the
air and rolling on the grass of the Kansas prairie, up to the
farmhouse, though the silver shoes fall off her feet en route and are
lost in the Deadly Desert. She runs to Aunt Em, saying "I'm so glad to
be home again!"

Illustrations
======================================================================
The book was illustrated by Baum's friend and collaborator W. W.
Denslow, who also co-held the copyright. The design was lavish for the
time, with illustrations on many pages, backgrounds in different
colors, and several color plate illustrations. The typeface featured
the newly designed Monotype Old Style. In September 1900, The 'Grand
Rapids Herald' wrote that Denslow's illustrations are "quite as much
of the story as in the writing". The editorial opined that had it not
been for Denslow's pictures, the readers would be unable to picture
precisely the figures of Dorothy, Toto, and the other characters.

Denslow's illustrations were so well known that merchants of many
products obtained permission to use them to promote their wares. The
forms of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, the
Wizard, and Dorothy were made into rubber and metal sculptures.
Costume jewelry, mechanical toys, and soap were also designed using
their figures. The distinctive look of Denslow's illustrations led to
imitators at the time, most notably Eva Katherine Gibson's
'Zauberlinda, the Wise Witch', which mimicked both the typography and
the illustration design of 'Oz'.

A new edition of the book appeared in 1944, with illustrations by
Evelyn Copelman. Although it was claimed that the new illustrations
were based on Denslow's originals, they more closely resemble the
characters as seen in the famous 1939 film version of Baum's book.

Baum's personal life
======================
According to Baum's son, Harry Neal, the author had often told his
children "whimsical stories before they became material for his
books". Harry Baum called his father the "swellest man I knew", a man
who was able to give a decent reason as to why black birds cooked in a
pie could afterwards get out and sing.

Many of the characters, props, and ideas in the novel were drawn from
Baum's personal life and experiences. Baum held different jobs, moved
a lot, and was exposed to many people, so the inspiration for the
story could have been taken from many different aspects of his life.
In the introduction to the story, Baum writes that "it aspires to
being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are
retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out".

Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman
===============================
As a child, Baum frequently had nightmares of a scarecrow pursuing him
across a field. Moments before the scarecrow's "ragged hay fingers"
nearly gripped his neck, it would fall apart before his eyes. Decades
later, as an adult, Baum integrated his tormentor into the novel as
the Scarecrow. In the early 1880s, Baum's play 'Matches' was being
performed when a "flicker from a kerosene lantern sparked the
rafters", causing the Baum opera house to be consumed by flames.
Scholar Evan I. Schwartz suggested that this might have inspired the
Scarecrow's severest terror: "There is only one thing in the world I
am afraid of. A lighted match."

According to Baum's son Harry, the Tin Woodman was born from Baum's
attraction to window displays. He wished to make something captivating
for the window displays, so he used an eclectic assortment of scraps
to craft a striking figure. From a wash-boiler he made a body, from
bolted stovepipes he made arms and legs, and from the bottom of a
saucepan he made a face. Baum then placed a funnel hat on the figure,
which ultimately became the Tin Woodman.

Dorothy, Uncle Henry, and the Witches
=======================================
Baum's wife Maud Gage frequently visited their newborn niece, Dorothy
Louise Gage, whom she adored as the daughter she never had. The infant
became gravely sick and died at the age of five months in Bloomington,
Illinois, on November 11, 1898, from "congestion of the brain". Maud
was devastated. To assuage her distress, Baum made his protagonist of
'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' a girl named Dorothy, and he dedicated
the book to his wife. The baby was buried at Evergreen Cemetery, where
her gravestone has a statue of the character Dorothy placed next to
it. Baum's mother-in-law, activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, has also been
cited as one of the inspirations for Dorothy.

Decades later, Jocelyn Burdick--the daughter of Baum's other niece,
Magdalena Carpenter, and a former Democratic U.S. Senator from North
Dakota--asserted that her mother also partly inspired the character of
Dorothy. Burdick claimed that her great-uncle spent "considerable time
at the Сarpenter homestead ... and became very attached to Magdalena".
Burdick has reported many similarities between her mother's homestead
and the farm of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.

Uncle Henry was modeled after Henry Gage, Baum's father-in-law. Bossed
around by his wife Matilda, Henry rarely dissented with her. He
flourished in business, though, and his neighbors looked up to him.
Likewise, Uncle Henry was a "passive but hard-working man" who "looked
stern and solemn, and rarely spoke".

The witches in the novel were influenced by witch-hunting research
gathered by Matilda Joslyn Gage. The stories of barbarous acts against
accused witches scared Baum. Two key events in the novel involve
wicked witches who meet their death through metaphorical means. Baum's
biographers have also drawn correlations between Baum's Good Witch and
Gage's feminist writings.

The Emerald City and the Land of Oz
=====================================
In 1890, Baum lived in Aberdeen, South Dakota during a drought, and he
wrote a story in his "Our Landlady" column in Aberdeen's 'The Saturday
Pioneer' about a farmer who gave green goggles to his horses, causing
them to believe that the wood chips that they were eating were pieces
of grass. Similarly, the Wizard made the people in the Emerald City
wear green goggles so that they would believe that their city was
built from emeralds.

During Baum's short stay in Aberdeen, the dissemination of myths about
the West continued. However, the West, instead of being a wonderland,
turned into a wasteland because of a drought and a depression. In
1891, Baum moved his family from South Dakota to Chicago. At that
time, Chicago was getting ready for the World's Columbian Exposition
in 1893. Scholar Laura Barrett stated that Chicago was "considerably
more akin to Oz than to Kansas". After discovering that the myths
about the West's incalculable riches were baseless, Baum created "an
extension of the American frontier in Oz". In many respects, Baum's
creation is similar to the actual frontier save for the fact that the
West was still undeveloped at the time. The Munchkins Dorothy
encounters at the beginning of the novel represent farmers, as do the
Winkies she later meets.

Local legend has it that Oz, also known as the Emerald City, was
inspired by a prominent castle-like building in the community of
Castle Park near Holland, Michigan, where Baum lived during the
summer. The yellow brick road was derived from a road at that time
paved by yellow bricks, located in Peekskill, New York, where Baum
attended the Peekskill Military Academy. Baum scholars often refer to
the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (the "White City") as an inspiration for
the Emerald City. Other legends suggest that the inspiration came from
the Hotel Del Coronado near San Diego, California. Baum was a frequent
guest at the hotel and had written several of the Oz books there. In a
1903 interview with 'The Publishers' Weekly', Baum said that the name
"Oz" came from his file cabinet labeled "O-Z".

Some critics have suggested that Baum's Oz may have been inspired by
Australia. Australia is often colloquially spelled or referred to as
"Oz". Furthermore, in 'Ozma of Oz' (1907), Dorothy gets back to Oz as
the result of a storm at sea while she and Uncle Henry are traveling
by ship to Australia. Like Australia, Oz is an island continent
somewhere to the west of California with inhabited regions bordering
on a great desert. Baum perhaps intended Oz to be Australia or a
magical land in the center of the great Australian desert.

''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''
======================================
In addition to being influenced by the fairy-tales of the Brothers
Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, Baum was significantly influenced
by English writer Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel 'Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland'. Although Baum found the plot of Carroll's novel to be
incoherent, he identified the book's source of popularity as Alice
herself--a child with whom younger readers could identify, and this
influenced Baum's choice of Dorothy as his protagonist.

Although influenced by Carroll's distinctly English work, Baum
nonetheless sought to create a story that had recognizable American
elements, such as farming and industrialization. Consequently, Baum
combined the conventional features of a fairy tale such as witches and
wizards with well-known fixtures in his young readers' Midwestern
lives such as scarecrows and cornfields.

Influence of Denslow
======================
The original illustrator of the novel, W. W. Denslow, aided in the
development of Baum's story and greatly influenced the way it has been
interpreted. Baum and Denslow had a close working relationship and
worked together to create the presentation of the story through the
images and the text. Color is an important element of the story and is
present throughout the images, with each chapter having a different
color representation. Denslow also added characteristics to his
drawings that Baum never described. For example, Denslow drew a house
and the gates of the Emerald City with faces on them.

In the later 'Oz' books, John R. Neill, who illustrated all the
sequels, continued to use elements from Denslow's earlier
illustrations, including faces on the Emerald City's gates. Another
aspect is the Tin Woodman's funnel hat, which is not mentioned in the
text until later books but appears in most artists' interpretation of
the character, including the stage and film productions of 1902-1909,
1908, 1910, 1914, 1925, 1931, 1933, 1939, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1992, and
others. One of the earliest illustrators not to include a funnel hat
was Russell H. Schulz in the 1957 Whitman Publishing edition--Schulz
depicted him wearing a pot on his head. Libico Maraja's illustrations,
which first appeared in a 1957 Italian edition and have also appeared
in English-language and other editions, are well known for depicting
him bareheaded.

Critical response
======================================================================
'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' received positive critical reviews upon
release. In a September 1900 review, 'The New York Times' praised the
novel, writing that it would appeal to child readers and to younger
children who could not read yet. The review also praised the
illustrations for being a pleasant complement to the text.

During the subsequent decades after the novel's publication in 1900,
it received little critical analysis from scholars of children's
literature. Lists of suggested reading published for juvenile readers
never contained Baum's work, and his works were rarely assigned in
classrooms. This lack of interest stemmed from the scholars'
misgivings about fantasy, as well as to their belief that lengthy
series had little literary merit.

It frequently came under fire in later decades. In 1957, the director
of Detroit's libraries banned 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' for having
"no value" for children of today, for supporting "negativism", and for
bringing children's minds to a "cowardly level". Professor Russel B.
Nye of Michigan State University countered that "if the message of the
Oz books--love, kindness, and unselfishness make the world a better
place--seems of no value today", then maybe the time is ripe for
"reassess[ing] a good many other things besides the Detroit library's
approved list of children's books".

In 1986, seven Fundamentalist Christian families in Tennessee opposed
the novel's inclusion in the public school syllabus and filed a
lawsuit. They based their opposition to the novel on its depicting
benevolent witches and promoting the belief that integral human
attributes were "individually developed rather than God-given". One
parent said: "I do not want my children seduced into godless
supernaturalism." Other reasons included the novel's teaching that
females are equal to males and that animals are personified and can
speak. The judge ruled that when the novel was being discussed in
class, the parents were allowed to have their children leave the
classroom.

In April 2000, the Library of Congress declared 'The Wonderful Wizard
of Oz' to be "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale",
also naming it the first American fantasy for children and one of the
most-read children's books. Leonard Everett Fisher of 'The Horn Book
Magazine' wrote in 2000 that 'Oz' has "a timeless message from a less
complex era, and it continues to resonate". The challenge of valuing
oneself during impending adversity has not, Fisher noted, lessened
during the prior 100 years. Two years later, in a 2002 review, Bill
Delaney of 'Salem Press' praised Baum for giving children the
opportunity to discover magic in the mundane things in their everyday
lives. He further commended Baum for teaching "millions of children to
love reading during their crucial formative years". In 2012 it was
ranked number 41 on a list of the top 100 children's novels published
by 'School Library Journal'.

Editions
======================================================================
After George M. Hill's bankruptcy in 1902, copyright in the book
passed to the Bowen-Merrill Company of Indianapolis, which published
most of Baum's other books from 1901 to 1903, both reprints ('Father
Goose, His Book', 'The Magical Monarch of Mo', 'American Fairy Tales',
'Dot and Tot of Merryland') and new works ('The Master Key', 'The Army
Alphabet', 'The Navy Alphabet', 'The Life and Adventures of Santa
Claus', 'The Enchanted Island of Yew', 'The Songs of Father Goose').
Bowen-Merrill's 1903 edition initially had the title 'The New Wizard
of Oz', to distinguish it from the 1902 musical, which was by then
better known than the original book and had a very different story.
The word "New" was quickly dropped in subsequent printings, leaving
the now-familiar shortened title, 'The Wizard of Oz', and some minor
textual changes were added, such as to "yellow daises", and changing a
chapter title from "The Rescue" to "How the Four Were Reunited". The
editions they published lacked most of the in-text color and color
plates of the original. Many cost-cutting measures were implemented,
including removal of some of the color printing without replacing it
with black, printing nothing rather than the beard of the Soldier with
the Green Whiskers.

When Baum filed for bankruptcy after his critically and popularly
successful film and stage production 'The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays'
failed to make back its production costs, Baum lost the rights to all
of the books published by what was now called Bobbs-Merrill, and they
were licensed to the M. A. Donahue Company, which printed them in
significantly cheaper "blotting paper" editions with advertising that
directly competed with Baum's more recent books, published by the
Reilly & Britton Company, from which he was making his living,
explicitly hurting sales of 'The Patchwork Girl of Oz', the new Oz
book for 1913, to boost sales of 'Wizard', which Donahue called in a
full-page ad in 'The Publishers' Weekly' (June 28, 1913), Baum's "one
pre-eminently great Juvenile Book". In a letter to Baum dated December
31, 1914, F. K. Reilly lamented that the average buyer employed by a
retail store would not understand why he should be expected to spend
75 cents for a copy of 'Tik-Tok of Oz' when he could buy a copy of
'Wizard' for between 33 and 36 cents. Baum had previously written a
letter complaining about the Donahue deal, which he did not know about
until it was fait accompli, and one of the investors who held 'The
Wizard of Oz' rights had inquired why the royalty was only five or six
cents per copy, depending on quantity sold, which made no sense to
Baum.

A new edition from Bobbs-Merrill in 1949 illustrated by Evelyn
Copelman, again titled 'The New Wizard of Oz', paid lip service to
Denslow but was based strongly, apart from the Lion, on the MGM movie.
Copelman had illustrated a new edition of 'The Magical Monarch of Mo'
two years earlier.

It was not until the book entered the public domain in 1956 that new
editions, either with the original color plates, or new illustrations,
proliferated. A revised version of Copelman's artwork was published in
a Grosset & Dunlap edition, and Reilly & Lee (formerly Reilly
& Britton) published an edition in line with the Oz sequels, which
had previously treated 'The Marvelous Land of Oz' as the first Oz
book, not having the publication rights to 'Wizard', with new
illustrations by Dale Ulrey. Ulrey had previously illustrated Jack
Snow's 'Jaglon and the Tiger-Faries', an expansion of a Baum short
story "The Story of Jaglon", and a 1955 edition of 'The Tin Woodman of
Oz', though both sold poorly. Later Reilly & Lee editions used
Denslow's original illustrations.

Notable more recent editions are the 1986 Pennyroyal edition
illustrated by Barry Moser, which was reprinted by the University of
California Press, and the 2000 'The Annotated Wizard of Oz' edited by
Michael Patrick Hearn (heavily revised from a 1972 edition that was
printed in a wide format that allowed for it to be a facsimile of the
original edition with notes and additional illustrations at the
sides), which was published by W. W. Norton and included all the
original color illustrations, as well as supplemental artwork by
Denslow. Other centennial editions included University Press of
Kansas's 'Kansas Centennial Edition', illustrated by Michael McCurdy
with black-and-white illustrations, and Robert Sabuda's pop-up book.

Sequels
======================================================================
Baum wrote 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' without any thought of a
sequel. After reading the novel, thousands of children wrote letters
to him, requesting that he craft another story about Oz. In 1904, amid
financial difficulties, Baum wrote and published the first sequel,
'The Marvelous Land of Oz', declaring that he grudgingly wrote the
sequel to address the popular demand. He dedicated the book to stage
actors Fred Stone and David C. Montgomery who played the characters of
the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman on stage. Baum wrote large roles for
the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman that he deleted from the stage version,
'The Woggle-Bug', after Montgomery and Stone had balked at leaving a
successful show to do a sequel.

Baum later wrote sequels in 1907, 1908, and 1909. In his 1910 'The
Emerald City of Oz', he wrote that he could not continue writing
sequels because Ozland had lost contact with the rest of the world.
The children refused to accept this story, so Baum, in 1913 and every
year thereafter until his death in May 1919, wrote an 'Oz' book,
ultimately writing 13 sequels and half a dozen Oz short stories.

Baum explained the purpose of his novels in a note he penned to his
sister, Mary Louise Brewster, in a copy of 'Mother Goose in Prose'
(1897), his first book. He wrote: "To please a child is a sweet and a
lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward." After
Baum's death in 1919, Baum's publishers delegated the creation of more
sequels to Ruth Plumly Thompson who wrote 21. An original 'Oz' book
was published every Christmas between 1913 and 1942. By 1956, five
million copies of the 'Oz' books had been published in the English
language, while hundreds of thousands had been published in eight
foreign languages.

Adaptations
======================================================================
'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' has been adapted to other media numerous
times. Within several decades after its publication, the book had
inspired a number of stage and screen adaptations, including a
profitable 1902 Broadway musical and three silent films. The most
popular cinematic adaptation of the story is 'The Wizard of Oz', the
1939 film starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert
Lahr. The 1939 film was considered innovative because of its special
effects and revolutionary use of Technicolor.

The story has been translated into other languages (at least once
without permission, resulting in Alexander Volkov's 'The Wizard of the
Emerald City' novel and its sequels, which were translated into
English by Sergei Sukhinov) and adapted into comics several times.
Following the lapse of the original copyright, the characters have
been adapted and reused in spin-offs, unofficial sequels, and
reinterpretations, some of which have been controversial in their
treatment of Baum's characters.

Influence and legacy
======================================================================
'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' has become an established part of
multiple cultures, spreading from its early young American readership
to becoming known throughout the world. It has been translated or
adapted into nearly every major language, at times being modified in
local variations. For instance, in some abridged Indian editions, the
Tin Woodman was replaced with a horse. In Russia, a translation by
Alexander Melentyevich Volkov produced six books, 'The Wizard of the
Emerald City' series, which became progressively distanced from the
Baum version, as Ellie and her dog Totoshka travel throughout the
Magic Land. The 1939 film adaptation has become a classic of popular
culture, shown annually on American television from 1959 to 1998 and
then several times a year every year beginning in 1999.

In 1974, the story was re-envisioned as 'The Wiz', a Tony Award
winning musical featuring an all-Black cast and set in the context of
modern African-American culture. This musical was adapted in 1978 as
the feature film 'The Wiz', a musical adventure fantasy produced by
Universal Pictures and Motown Productions.

There were several Hebrew translations published in Israel. As
established in the first translation and kept in later ones, the
book's 'Land of Oz' was rendered in Hebrew as 'Eretz Uz' (ארץ
עוץ)--i.e. the same as the original Hebrew name of the Biblical 'Land
of Uz', homeland of Job. Thus, for Hebrew readers, this translators'
choice added a layer of Biblical connotations absent from the English
original.

In 2018, "The Lost Art of Oz" project was initiated to locate and
catalogue the surviving original artwork John R. Neill, W. W. Denslow,
Frank Kramer, Richard "Dirk" Gringhuis, and Dick Martin that was
created to illustrate the 'Oz' book series. In 2020, an Esperanto
translation of the novel was used by a team of scientists to
demonstrate a new method for encoding text in DNA that remains
readable after repeated copying.

Allegorical analysis
======================================================================
This book also seems to follow Joseph Campbell's a "Hero with a
thousand faces"/"monomyth" theme. "To see The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
simply as Dorothy's quest for a way to return to Kansas is to miss
many of the sources of the books' strength, for like most quest
heroes, Dorothy achieves far more than simply finding her way home."
"'The Wizard of Oz' follows the course of the hero's journey in the
structure of 'Departure', 'Initiation', and 'Return' which Campbell
describes in 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces'.

Allusions to 19th-century America
===================================
Many decades after its publication, Baum's work gave rise to various
political interpretations, particularly in regards to the 19th-century
Populist movement in the United States. In a 1964 'American Quarterly'
article titled "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism", educator Henry
Littlefield posited that the book served an allegory for the late
19th-century bimetallism debate regarding monetary policy.
Littlefield's thesis achieved some support but was widely criticized
by others. Other political interpretations soon followed. In 1971,
historian Richard J. Jensen theorized in 'The Winning of the Midwest'
that "Oz" was derived from the common abbreviation for "ounce", used
for denoting quantities of gold and silver.

See also
======================================================================
* 1900 in literature
* 'The Baum Bugle'
* 'Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz'
* Wizard of Oz Club
* 'Lost in Oz' (TV series)
* 'Tin Man' (miniseries)
* 'Wicked'
* 'The Wiz'

External links
======================================================================
*
* Text:
**
**
** [https://www.archive.org/details/wonderfulwizardo00baumiala 'The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz' (1900 illustrated copy)], Publisher's green
and red illustrated cloth over boards; illustrated endpapers. Plate
detached. Public Domain - Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA. at
Internet Archive
**
[https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbc3&fileName=rbc0001_2006gen32405page.db&recNum=0
Online version of the 1900 first edition] on the Library of Congress
website.
* Audio:
**
** , an unabridged dramatic audio performance at Wired for Books.
*
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140807064333/http://scream-it-loud.com/articles/film-retrospectives/a-long-and-dangerous-journey-a-history-of-the-wizard-of-oz-on-the-silver-screen/
A Long and Dangerous Journey - A History of 'The Wizard of Oz' on the
Silver Screen] - Scream-It-Loud.com
*
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUmuwyhWkW4 'The Wonderful Wizard
of Oz Full Story'], a faithful animated narration by Little Fox.

License
=========
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz