Ruth Plumly Thompson wrote other stories during her years as Royal Historian of Oz. One of her earlier books is a collection of short tales called
The Princess of Cozytown, which was published by Volland in 1922. This is the same company that published
The Perhappsy Chaps, and this book follows the same format - paper covered boards, presented in a matching box. The copy shown on the left is in its original box, and the lovely illustrations are by Janet Laura Scott.
The Wonder Book was a collection of stories by Thompson, compiled and published by Reilly & Lee in 1929. Many of these pieces were from her earlier days on the children's page of the
Philadelphia Public Ledger newspaper. My copy is pretty worn, but the International Wizard of Oz Club has recently published a new edition of this title.
Ruth Plumly Thompson wrote other stories during her years as Royal Historian of Oz. One of her earlier books is a collection of short tales called The Princess of Cozytown, which was published by Volland in 1922. This is the same company that published The Perhappsy Chaps, and this book follows the same format - paper covered boards, presented in a matching box. The copy shown on the left is in its original box, and the lovely illustrations are by Janet Laura Scott.
The Wonder Book was a collection of stories by Thompson, compiled and published by Reilly & Lee in 1929. Many of these pieces were from her earlier days on the children's page of the Philadelphia Public Ledger newspaper. My copy is pretty worn, but the International Wizard of Oz Club has recently published a new edition of this title.
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3 comments:
Bill,
Any idea why The Wonder Book is so hard to find? I managed to get a copy a few years ago after looking for literally 20 years!
I really don't know - I can only assume that a smaller quantity were printed - or maybe it just wasn't held onto and saved the way that Oz books were. I first saw a copy years ago, and passed it up thinking it wasn't that big of a deal - although I learned differently when I didn't see another copy for about 15 years!
I've always kind of assumed that maybe the stock-market crash of 1929 killed the book.
Probably orders were very bad as stores were sent reeling after the October crash, which killed Christmas sales, and R&L let the book drop quickly and concentrated on the Oz books instead.
I had looked for the book for years, too. I eventually wound up obtaining Ruth Plumly Thompson's personal copy which she had somewhat shredded and marked up. About a month later I found a really nice copy. Two in a month - and never one again since.
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