Dorothy and her dog Toto, accompanied by the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion, arrive in the Emerald City where they hope to see the Wizard of Oz.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been enchanting audiences since it was first published in 1900. While many fans may know the work only by its movie counterpart, the world L. Frank Baum built within the books is much more elaborate. Since the more recent publication of Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and the Broadway play of the same name, fans have had a rekindled interest in Baum's original works from which the retellings draw heavily. Anyone interested in fantasy, magic, and silliness is sure to love this American classic.L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) is one of the most recognized and beloved children's authors, though he is often recognized for only one of his many stories. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is easily his most popular work, though Baum actually wrote 13 sequels in Oz. His writings consist of practically every genre: Baum wrote 55 novels in total, 82 short stories, more than 200 poems, as well as scripts, and other miscellaneous writings. Interestingly, many of his non-Oz works were published under pseudonyms. Baum made many attempts to bring his work to stage and screen, but the most successful productions were not made until after his death.

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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of both the popular 1902 Broadway musical and the well-known 1939 film adaptation. The story chronicles the adventures of a young girl named Dorothy Gale in the Land of Oz, after being swept away from her Kansas farm home in a cyclone.[nb 1] The novel is one of the best-known stories in American popular culture and has been widely translated. Its initial success, and the success of the 1902 Broadway musical which Baum adapted from his original story, led to Baum's writing thirteen more Oz books. The original book has been in the public domain in the US since 1956. Baum dedicated the book "to my good friend & comrade, My Wife," Maud Gage Baum. In January 1901, George M. Hill Company, the publisher, completed printing the first edition, which totaled 10,000 copies.

Swartz reminds us in that various stage and screen dramatizations of Baum's story preceded and influenced the 1939 film. This richly illustrated book contains many rare photographs, film stills, sketches, theater programs, and movie advertisements from the different productions. Piecing together the Chicago and Broadway stage productions (1902-3) from contemporary reviews, surviving script pages, and published song lyrics, Swartz shows how Baum and his many collaborators worked to transform the book into a popular theatrical attraction -- often requiring significant alterations to the original story.

In the first major literary biography of L. Frank Baum, Rebecca Loncraine tells the story of Oz as you've never heard it, with a look behind the curtain at the vivid life and eccentric imagination of its creator. L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1899 and it was first published in 1900. A runaway hit, it was soon recognized as America's first modern fairy tale. Baum's life story, like the fictional world he created, is uniquely American, rooted in the transforming historical changes of his times. Baum was a complex and eccentric man who could never stay put for long; his restless creative spirit and voracious appetite for new projects led him across the U.S. during his lifetime, and he drew energy and inspiration from each new dramatic landscape he encountered,. Born in 1856, Baum spent his youth in the Finger Lakes region of New York as amputee soldiers returned from the Civil War; childhood mortality was also commonplace, blurring the lines between the living and the dead, and making room in Baum's young imagination for vividly real ghosts. When Baum was growing up, P. T. Barnum ruled the minds of small towns and his traveling circus was the most famous act around. Baum married a headstrong young woman named Maud Gage and they ventured out west to Dakota Territory, where they faced violent tornadoes, Ghost Dancing tribes and desperate droughts, before trading the hardships on the Great Plains for the excitement of Chicago and the fantastical White City of the World's Fair. Baum's writing tapped into an inner world that blurred his own sense of reality and fantasy. The Land of Oz, which Baum believed he had "discovered" rather than invented, grew into something far bigger and more popular than he'd ever imagined. After the roaring success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900, he became a kind of slave to his creation, trapped inside Oz as his army of demanding child fans kept sending him back there to create new adventures for Dorothy, Toto and the humbug wizard. He went on to write thirteen sequels to his first Oz book. He also wrote the first Broadway adaptations of his Oz tales, and turned his Oz books into some of the first motion pictures in a small and undiscovered rural settlement called "Hollywood". Baum co-founded the Oz Film Manufacturing Company, even as critics warned that no one would pay to see a children's story. And they were right- his early ventures were box office flops and the world was not ready for Oz on screen until 1939, when MGM released "The Wizard of Oz" in brilliant Technicolor. Baum was not around to see it-he'd died in bed in 1919 just weeks after completing his final Oz book. But the book and film alike have become classics, just as well-loved today as they were when they first appeared. The Real Wizard of Oz is an imaginatively written work that stretches the genre of biography and enriches our understanding of modern fairytales. L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its thirteen sequels, lived during eventful times in American history-- from 1856 to 1919-- that influenced nearly every aspect of his writing, from the Civil War to Hollywood, which was emerging as a modern Emerald City full of broken dreams and humbug wizards, to the gulf between America's prairie heartland, with its wild tornadoes, and its cities teeming with "Tin Man" factory workers. This is a colorful portrait of one man's vivid and eccentric imagination and the world that shaped it. Baum's famous fairytale is filled with the pain of the economic uncertainties of the Gilded Age and with a yearning for real change, ideas which many contemporary Americans will recognize. The Wizard of Oz continues to fascinate and influence us because it explores universal themes of longing for a better world, homesickness and finding inner strength amid the storms.

After a cyclone transports her to the land of Oz, Dorothy must seek out the great wizard in order to return to Kansas.