The Ever-Changing Wizard

 In 1956, the copyright on The Wizard of Oz expired. This gave Reilly & Lee, the publishers of the rest of the Oz series, their first opportunity to publish their own version of the book. But over the next ten years, their book would change repeatedly!

To start, a new edition of the book was set up with new illustrations by Dale Ulrey. This was a more elaborate Oz book than the publishers had produced in a while. Two-color illustrations, in rust and black, were printed throughout, and the front endpapers sported a full color map of Oz. This map had previously been featured in the 1954 Who’s Who in Oz, but in a slightly different form - and not in color! The book also had a dust jacket designed by Ulrey, featuring the Wizard himself. But by 1959, this jacket was replaced with a new design drawn by Roland Roycraft, who designed jackets for a handful of other Oz titles as well.

Perhaps the wizard wasn’t grabbing enough attention? The new design was quite bright with a hot pink curtain and cartoon-like images of Dorothy and her three friends. The endpaper map was gone, but the color work was still inside - my copy has the same rust and black color scheme of the earlier version. Then, in 1960 the jacket changed again, this time to a design by Dick Martin.

Martin’s Wizard jacket is a clever concept. Not quite as childlike as the Roycraft jacket, this time we have a wraparound design showing Dorothy and friends on the cover - with the same image, shown from behind, on the rear cover. The interior of the book still features Ulrey’s two-color illustrations, but they have now been given four different secondary colors - blue, green, yellow and red - to tie in with the story (more or less), in the same way that the illustrations did in the original 1900 book.

But this cover wasn’t destined to last either - in 1964 the entire book was given another overhaul, and most of the original illustrations by W. W. Denslow (printed in two colors) were restored. Dick Martin was responsible for the redesign, and this time the cover image was printed directly on the cloth of the book, in full color. The design chosen was based on a rare poster by Denslow, advertising the original edition, and a dust jacket was no longer part of the book. (Edit - according to Michael Hearn, the earliest copies of this book were issued with a glassine dust jacket.)

And then a year later the cover changed again! This time it was based on a Denslow drawing of Dorothy being carried from the deadly poppy field, with a white background and spine. The rest of the Baum titles were given new covers as well, creating what’s now known as the “white spine” edition. This final version was the last design used on the book by Reilly & Lee, and remained in use for the next ten years.

Dick Martin's Wizard

Previously I showed three of the 1961 Oz adaptations illustrated by Dick Martin. Since then, I've come up with a copy of the first title, The Wizard of Oz. This seems to be the scarcest of the series, and prices can vary wildly. So much of collecting seems to be waiting for the right copy at the right price at the right time!

I've never been a great fan of Martin's work, but he provides colorful and energetic illustrations for the story. It's humorous to note how his Dorothy seems to have fallen asleep in the poppies more elegantly than Denslow's version - but Denslow does conjure up a child who's dropped in her tracks!

I particularly like the rear cover illustration showing the Scarecrow sitting and reading a first edition of the Wonderful Wizard, next to a stack of the new adaptations. The verbiage explains how these adaptations prepare a child for the full length versions of the books - but I think the Scarecrow has the right idea. Skip the adaptations and launch into the real book!

East is East and West is West....Sometimes

A few posts back, I had a question from a reader asking about Oz maps and why the Munchkins and Winkies switch locations on various maps. This is one of those perennial questions that has no definite answer, but there are a number of theories.

The first map of Oz was created as a glass slide for L. Frank Baum's traveling show The Fairylogue and Radio Plays. On this simple map, seen on the right from The Annotated Wizard of Oz, the Munchkins are in the east and the Winkies are in the west, as described in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The next map came out in 1914, as the endpapers of Tik-Tok of Oz. On this much more detailed map, the Munchkins are on the left, which is usually the west, and the Winkies are on the right, usually the east. However, the points on the compass rose clearly place the east on the left and the west on the right. This is unlike any standard map, but Oz is a magical land - perhaps that is simply how things work there!

When this map was reprinted in 1920 to hand out with Oz books purchased that year, someone seems to have noticed the unusual compass points and corrected them. The Munchkins are now irrevocably in the west, and the Winkies in the east. Ruth Plumly Thompson regularly referenced the Oz map when writing her stories, so the two countries remained in their incorrect locations.

When new maps were created in the 1960s by Oz Club members James Haff and Dick Martin, the odd placement of Munchkins and Winkies was corrected. The new maps used a standard compass rose, and the entire country was reworked to try and clear up location discrepancies. This is the same basic map currently available from the International Wizard of Oz Club, although it has been updated a few times over the years. But I still like the original map in Tik-Tok with it's unique directions - that's how I think the map should be!

Happy Easter!

In honor of Easter, I'm showing a well aged chocolate bunny who has been living in my freezer for nearly 25 years. It was never intended that he should last this long, but sometimes these things happen!

I bought him in Rochester NY, where a sister of mine was living at the time, but for some reason he didn't get eaten that first year. After that, it became a matter of curiosity to see how long he might last, and he has lived up to the challenge beyond any expectations - even surviving a fall off a table, and a mild dog attack. Of course one of these years he might not make it back to the freezer.

The Easter Bunny does make an appearance in the last of the Oz books published by Reilly & Lee, in 1963. In Merry Go Round in Oz, Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion visit the Easter Bunny and his workshop during preparations for an Easter party in the Emerald City. It's a shame John R. Neill didn't get to illustrate this episode, as he had such a way with rabbits! Still, Dick Martin came up with appropriately festive bunnies. Incidentally, there's quite a resemblance between Martin's endpaper design for Merry Go Round, and Neill's design for The Yellow Knight of Oz!

Adaptations

I'm afraid I've been neglecting my blog entries, but it's been a hectic few weeks here. We've been moving our studio to a new location after being settled for 20 years, and I've spent more time transporting boxes and painting than anything else!

In 1961, Dick Martin illustrated adaptations of the first 4 Oz books for Reilly & Lee. I have three of these, but I'm missing The Wizard of Oz which seems to be the hardest to find. I've always had mixed feelings toward Martin's work, but these books are energetic and a lot of fun.

The illustration on the right shows Ozma entering the Nome King's ornament room, and is a good example of the colorful style used by the artist. The array of knick-knacks is amusing, and Ozma herself is wearing a slightly bizarre martial cockade of a headdress, very different from what is usually seen. These books were adapted by Jean Kellogg, who also adapted several of L. Frank Baum's Queer Visitors From the Marvelous Land of Oz comic pages for the book The Visitors From Oz. This was published in 1964 with Dick Martin illustrations as well.

I was struck by a drawing in Ozma of Oz of the Scarecrow egging the Nome King. It could be coinci- dental, but the overall layout of the illustration really calls to my mind the unused Dale Ulrey drawing for the same scene. I can't help wondering if Dick Martin was familiar with that piece - considering his connections with Reilly & Lee and the Oz enthusiasts of the time, it would be very possible.

Merry Go Round in Oz

Merry Go Round in Oz, published in 1963, was the last of the Oz books published by Reilly & Lee, and the only one published in my lifetime - although I was too young to know anything about it! This was written by the mother and daughter team of Eloise and Lauren McGraw, and illustrated by Dick Martin - his first full length Oz book. In 1989, Dick Martin designed a new cover for the first reprint edition of this book.

By this point in the series, the variety of authors and illustrators involved in creating the books makes the late sequels feel a good deal less cohesive to me. I'll admit to preferring the earlier books, but it's still amazing to see what a long run the original book inspired. This title is the end of the forty book "Oz Canon", the run of books considered by many to be the Oz series. Quite a few titles have been written since, although relatively few have had widespread distribution.

The International Wizard of Oz Club published a second Oz book by the McGraws in 1980, titled The Forbidden Fountain of Oz, again with illustrations by Dick Martin. In 2001, Hungry Tiger Press published The Rundlestone of Oz, which was Eloise McGraw's last book. This was illustrated by Eric Shanower.

Animal Fairy Tales

L. Frank Baum's Animal Fairy Tales was another series of short stories, originally published in The Delineator magazine, in 1905. These stories dealt with the animal kingdom, and the fairy legends of the animals.

These stories were not collected in book form until 1969, when they were published by The International Wizard of Oz Club, with illustrations by Dick Martin.

A later edition was published by Books of Wonder, using facsimiles of the original magazine pages with illustrations by Charles Livingston Bull. I've seen many pieces of Bull artwork offered over the years, but haven't run across anything from this series - I'd be curious to know whether any of these drawings survive.

In 1953, Reilly & Lee published Jaglon and the Tiger Fairies, a re-written version of one of the stories, as a book with illustrations by Dale Ulrey. One of these days, I'll have to get a copy of that!