Books: The Oz Series By L. Frank Baum

The Land of Oz is a magical country first introduced in the 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow.

Oz consists of four vast quadrants, the Gillikin Country in the north, Quadling Country in the south, Munchkin Country in the east, and Winkie Country in the west.  Each province has its own ruler, but the realm itself has always been ruled by a single monarch. According to The Marvelous Land of Oz, this monarch is Princess Ozma.

Originally, Baum did not intend for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to have any sequels, but it achieved greater popularity than any of the other fairylands he created, including the land of Merryland in Baum’s children’s novel Dot and Tot in Merryland, written a year later.  Due to Oz’s worldwide success, Baum decided to return to it four years after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published.  For the next two decades, he described and expanded upon the land in the Oz Books, a series that introduced many fictional characters and creatures.  Baum intended to end the series with the sixth Oz book The Emerald City of Oz (1910), in which Oz is forever sealed off and made invisible to the outside world, but this did not sit well with fans, and he quickly abandoned the idea, writing eight more successful Oz books, and even naming himself the “Royal Historian of Oz.”

In all, Baum wrote fourteen best-selling children’s books about Oz and its enchanted inhabitants, as well as a spin-off series of six early readers.  After his death in 1919, author Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrator John R. Neill (who had previously collaborated with Baum on his Oz books) and several other writers and artists continued the series.  There are now over 50 novels based upon Baum’s original Oz saga.

Baum characterized Oz as a real place, unlike MGM’s 1939 musical movie adaptation, which presents it as a dream of lead character Dorothy Gale.  According to the Oz books, it is a hidden fairyland cut off from the rest of the world by the Deadly Desert.

A shorthand reference for a person living in Oz is “Ozite”.  The term appears in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, The Road to Oz, and The Emerald City of Oz.  Elsewhere in the books, “Ozmie” is also used.  In the animated 1974 semi-sequel to the MGM film, Journey Back to Oz, “Ozonian” is in the script.  The term “Ozian” appears in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage adaptation of the MGM movie and in the work Wicked.  “Ozmite” was used in Reilly & Lee marketing in the 1920s, a fact which has suggested to some critics that “Ozmie” may have been a typographical error.

Read lots more about the Land Of Oz in great detail including its characteristics, geography, history, animals, races, magic, characters etc. by clicking here.