Baum's Mother Goose

Mother Goose in Prose was the first book I read by L. Frank Baum that was not an Oz book. It's a collection of charming "explanations" of Mother Goose rhymes, filling in gaps and turning the familiar tales into fleshed-out accounts. Sometimes the explanations feel a bit forced, but it's still a fun collection of short stories!

In the mid-1970's there was a burst of popularity for the work of Maxfield Parrish, and I was given a copy of the 1974 edition published by Bounty Books. The popularity of Parrish can be seen by comparing the large elaborate font used for his name on the cover to the much smaller, plainer font used for the author. The original edition didn't even mention Parrish on the cover, but his distinctive artwork may have been advertising enough!

Mother Goose in Prose was the first book illustrated by Parrish, as well as L. Frank Baum's first published children's book. I recently added a later edition to my collection, the last Bobbs-Merrill printing of the title. This was in publication between the 1920's and 1940's.

I find these two versions to be the most attractive printings of this book. The first edition, published by Way & Williams in 1897, is an oversized book with a bold cover printed with a color Parrish image that isn't used within the book itself. The same image is repeated on the rear cover, turning the entire book into an advertising poster. The Bobbs-Merrill edition is reduced to the standard size of an Oz book, but the cover is unique for adding color to one of the illustrations Parrish drew for the interior of the volume. Both are eye-catching, and cry out to be picked up and looked at.

In the original edition the pages are large and well printed, making the most of the detailed illustrations. The later version adds a fun touch by printing the pictures in red on a yellow background, but the print quality is not quite as good. Incidentally, the illustration shown (for The Three Wise Men of Gotham) was printed on an angle in the original edition, giving the image a added dynamic. It was straightened for all editions after that.

Donahue & Company

In 1913 the Bobbs-Merrill Publishing Co. leased the printing plates of their line of L. Frank Baum books to M. A. Donohue & Co., a discount printer. This was quite a prize for Donahue, as it enabled them to print cheap editions of the popular Baum titles, particularly The Wizard of Oz. These editions also undercut the prices of the new Oz books offered by Reilly & Britton during the same time period. This continued until around 1920, when the arrangement ended.

Donahue was established in 1861 as Cox & Donahue Bookbinders. The name changed to Donahue & Henneberry around 1880, and at some point became Donahue Brothers before landing on M. A. Donahue in 1901. As an interesting side note, W. W. Denslow designed a generic book cover for Donahue & Henneberry, (shown on the left), that was in use for a number of years. The company was based in Chicago and continued into the 1960's.

Pictured at the top of the page are two of the Donahue books, a Wizard and a Dot and Tot, both in dust jackets. The quality of the printing in the books declined during this period. At first it was essentially the same as the Bobbs-Merrill editions, but later printings dropped much of the color used in the interior. Still, Donahue was not shy about promoting their books; an original 1913 ad from Publisher's Weekly is shown on the right.

The publishers are quick to call The Wizard the one "pre-eminently great Juvenile Book" written by L. Frank Baum. They go on to claim that their copies are "the regular $1.50 editions in paper, presswork and binding — Sold to the Trade so they can be sold at 60 cents or less and pay you a good profit." Difficult for a retailer to argue with that!

Baum's American Fairy Tales

Baum's American Fairy Tales was published in 1908, but it is actually an expanded and updated version of American Fairy Tales from 1901. Three stories were added, and the book was re-illustrated with 16 two-color plates by George Kerr.  The publisher was the Bobbs Merrill company, who had already published several Baum books, and had the rights to the older Baum titles published by the defunct George M. Hill company.

The original edition of the book was rather elaborately produced, with 24 full page drawings and decorative borders on every page. But there are no color plates, and the drawings are by a variety of artists, which lends a somewhat uneven quality.

The 16 new illustrations in the new edition provide a more cohesive look to the book. Of course there is the rather obvious flaw on the cover drawing - the boy's hand is clearly backwards, or else his arm is being brutally twisted!

George Kerr is interesting for having contributed to several books in the Oz style, such as Bobby in Bugaboo Land, and The Golden Goblin. He was involved in a notorious divorce case in 1907-1909, and continued his career into the 1940's.

Oz Anniversary

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the classic MGM film The Wizard of Oz. When the movie was originally released in 1939, new editions of the original book were published by both the American publisher Bobbs Merrill, and the English publisher Hutchinson. Reilly and Lee, the publishers of the rest of the Oz series but not the first book, also produced new editions of three older titles - Land of Oz, Scarecrow of Oz and Tin Woodman of Oz - clearly hoping to ride the wave of publicity for the movie.

 

Of all these books, the English edition is the most interesting. The cover and dust jacket have a full color wraparound design featuring a scene from the film, plus there are 8 additional color plates of characters from the movie. These are publicity stills that have been colorized. On the downside, many of the Denslow illustrations have been dropped, and those that remain are printed in black and white.

The American version features a new dust jacket design, with artwork based on Denslow's illustrations. The endpapers are printed in sepia with stills of characters and scenes from the film. The interior is very much the same as the English version, but rather than the color plates of movie characters, there are still 8 two-color plates by Denslow. The English edition does seem to have tried harder!

Reilly and Lee come in a distant third with their efforts - the three titles produced are slightly over-sized with new cover designs by an anonymous artist. While the covers are colorful, I would prefer to have seen what John R. Neill might have come up with for new covers - after all, he had already re-designed several other Oz titles!

1901 Advertising

While doing some searching online, I ran across this ad for L. Frank Baum's The Master Key. I thought it was pretty humorous - and found it distinctly odd that it makes no mention of the book's author or publisher. This was in a 1901 newspaper, the Minneapolis Journal - I'm sorry to say McCarthy's Book Store no longer exists on Nicollet Avenue!

Father Goose Music

I've been lucky this year, in being able to fill a couple holes in my collection of books by L. Frank Baum. I posted about The Navy Alphabet back in February, and now I've acquired another book published by the George M. Hill Company, The Songs of Father Goose.

I've had a later Bobbs-Merrill version of this book for quite a while (on the left), but I was happy to run across a nice copy of the first edition. It's a book that frankly holds little interest for me, as it's basically a rehash of Father Goose, His Book with the addition of music. W. W. Denslow created a new cover design, and his illustrations are reprinted within the book, in black and white - the lack of color is unfortunate. Still, it's nice to have a good example, and interesting to see how much better the printing was on the first edition, as opposed to my later copy, from approximately 1920.

The songs must have been popular in their day - the publishers issued the music in sheet music folios (which are now very scarce) as well as the book format. In fact, the cover seen on the later Bobbs-Merrill version shown above was first used on the song folios. There were also newspaper supplements, two of which are shown below. And a certain immortality was added to the music when, in the 1944 movie Meet Me in St Louis, Judy Garland asks Margaret O'Brien if she would like to sing "Did You Ever See a Rabbit Climb a Tree?" - the first song in The Songs of Father Goose!

Leonard Weisgard

When I was a kid I belonged to the Junior Deluxe Edition book club. One of the titles I received through the club was this version of The Wizard of Oz, with illustrations by Leonard Weisgard. It's a pretty common book that turns up regularly on eBay, and I always liked it. The illustrations are simple black and white drawings, but there is a lovely color frontispiece of the main characters in the poppy field.

Weisgard was a prolific illustrator, as well as an author, working from the 1930s up to around 1989. He worked with a number of authors, particularly Margaret Wise Brown, and won a Caldecott medal in 1947. Since his death in 2000, his family has placed his archives with the Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. For more information on Weisgard, visit his family's webpage at leonardweisgard.com.

The illustrations are copyrighted 1955, and I've always wondered whether there was an earlier, different printing of this book with these illustrations. I do have another copy of the book, this time published by Bobbs-Merrill, the longtime publishers of The Wizard of Oz. This copy has the same illustrations but a different, plainer binding and uses the Bobbs-Merrill imprint on spine and title page.

The colorful dust jacket used for both versions of the book is credited to Dick Umnitz, and manages to incorporate quite a few details from the story into one image. The stamped cover of the Junior Deluxe edition is by an uncredited artist, but they were clearly influenced by the original W. W. Denslow illustrations.

Evelyn Copelman

I grew up with the 1944 edition of The Wizard of Oz, illustrated by Evelyn Copelman. I think this was the first unabridged edition to use new illustrations, and the title page claims that they were based on the original W. W. Denslow drawings. I think the MGM film had a stronger influence on the drawings than anything else, and some incidents are independent of any influence. A later edition added more illustrations to the book. I used to get this version out of the local library frequently, much to the confusion of my family. I don't think they realized the reason - more pictures!

When I first saw the original Denslow illustrations, they struck me as very odd - I was so used to this version of the story. I still have the original copy that I read; it was already worn by the time I got it, and is now a pretty decrepit book.

Copelman also illustrated a new edition of The Magical Monarch of Mo. Both of these titles were published by Bobbs-Merrill, who still had the rights to a number of Baum's early titles.

Enchanted Island of Yew

The Enchanted Island of Yew, from 1903, is one of L. Frank Baum's less "Americanized" stories. As with Queen Zixi of Ix, I think this tale has more of a long ago and far away sensibility, and is a bit more European in style.

This book was illustrated by Fanny Cory, who also illustrated The Master Key. For this title, Bobbs-Merrill tried a different approach. There are 8 full color plates, but the text illustrations are printed in orange under the actual text. It's a fun look for the book, but the drawings are difficult to distinguish - I'd much prefer to see them on their own.

M.A. Donohue publishers re-used the cover design from this title for another book, a collection of stories and fairy tales. I ran across one in a small antique mall once and was quite surprised to recognize the cover - since then I've seen a copy of it featured in the Baum Bugle. I had passed up the copy I saw, as it was in pretty rough condition!

Christmas in July

As it's the middle of the summer, I figured it was time to present a few Christmas books. First we have The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902), L. Frank Baum's story of the origin of St. Nick. In this book, Baum creates an entire mythology to help flesh out the Santa Claus legend - in some ways, it's similar to what he did in Mother Goose in Prose, starting with a traditional tale and making it his own. This book has been adapted into a couple different animated TV specials.

The illustrations are by Mary Cowles Clark, an artist from Syracuse, N.Y. I don't know if there are any surviving illustrations from this book. There are a few more examples of her work at:
http://www.nha.org/digitalexhibits/artistcolony/marycowlesclark.htm

Denslow's Night Before Christmas (1902) is exactly what the title says - W. W. Denslow's take on the classic Clement C. Moore poem. This was a follow up to Denslow's Mother Goose, and is in the same large picture book format. Denslow did a wonderful job of illustrating the poem, with his usual bold rich colors. The copy I'm showing is a first state, bound in paper covered boards. Later printings had a different, and much sturdier, cover. This book was reprinted in the 1980's - I'm surprised it hasn't been printed more often! I believe much of the artwork survives for this title.

Movie Editions

The 1939 MGM movie inspired a few special reprints of Oz titles, simple attempts to cash in on the publicity generated by the film. Bobbs Merrill produced a new edition of The Wizard of Oz with sepia toned endpapers featuring several stills and character portraits from the movie.

The dust jacket proudly proclaims it to be "the only edition containing the complete original text..." Unfortunately, by this point many of the Denslow illustrations had been dropped. Only a third of the original color plates were being used, and these are no longer in full color, appearing washed out and dull. The ingenious use of color throughout the book had already been dropped long ago.

Reilly & Lee produced three new "popular editions", selecting The Land of Oz, The Scarecrow of Oz, and The Tin Woodman of Oz. They obviously felt that these titles would have the most appeal to someone who had seen the movie - regardless of where the stories fell in the sequence of publication. These books were larger than the standard Oz titles, and had new covers and dust jackets.

The Land of Oz is particularly interesting, since Dorothy and the Wizard are prominently placed on the cover of the book, when they do not appear in the story!

I mentioned in an earlier post that Reilly & Lee produced a new edition of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz for Sears, Roebuck at this time. This volume is smaller than the standard Oz book.

All of these books feature new, colorful artwork on the covers by uncredited artists - Dorothy and the Wizard is based on a John R. Neill colorplate that was no longer in use, and The Wizard is based on a Denslow drawing . They are certainly eye catching, but I prefer the original artwork of the books.