Ozzy Letters

Over the years I've picked up several examples of letters from the original Oz creators. Letters are always a fun personal item to view, and can help to give a sense of the author as a person. I've blogged about some of these before, but here's an overview.

The oldest is a note from W. W. Denslow dated 1896, predating Oz. This would have been after his time at the Chicago Times-Herald newspaper, and at the height of his poster career, particularly for the Rand McNally Company. 

The letter is a simple reply to a Mr. Leon Kramer, stating that Denslow would be pleased to see the sender "... at any time you would care to call." I imagine a visit to Denslow would be quite an experience! 

 The letter is headed "302 Herald Building", the home of the Chicago Herald newspaper where Denslow still maintained a studio; though he was no longer on the newspaper staff. The letterhead and envelope are both printed in red and feature a detailed seahorse, or hippocampus, drawing. This of course would evolve into Denslow's standard totem, used as a signature in his drawings.

The next is a letter by L. Frank Baum to one of his fans, from 1908. With the success of the Oz series, Baum was besieged by letters from his fans. He took pains to answer them, though he often apologized for the delay in responding. 

This particular example is on stationary from the Hotel Del Coronado, a favorite vacation spot of the Baum family, and where they stayed while looking for a home on the peninsula. He thanks the author of the letter, Sam Cleag Field, for some drawings of characters as well as ideas for future Oz stories. This would have been shortly before the publication of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, the 4th Oz book.

The next letter is also from Baum, but with a difference - this was written after the author died. Maud Baum kept up the tradition of responding to young fans, using a rubber stamp of her husband's signature. These ghostly letters must have caused some confusion at the time among the better informed fans! 

This particular example is from 1920, congratulating a girl named Mildred on winning a prize from the Plains-Dealer - presumably a newspaper contest with an Oz related prize of some sort. This letter is written on the attractive Oz letterhead featuring a number of Baum's books.

The next letter jumps over 20 years to 1942 and is from John R. Neill, the third Oz author and prolific Oz illustrator. This letter doesn't feature any custom letterhead, in fact it looks to be hastily written on a plain sheet of paper and posted in an envelope from the International Information Service in Washington, DC. I haven't seen much in the way of letters to fans from Neill, so it's difficult to say if this was standard practice! 

This is written to Bobby Jones, and congratulates him on having read 32 Oz books - also mentioning that the next year's book will be about a wooden whale (Lucky Bucky in Oz). 

Finally, I have a letter from Ruth Plumly Thompson. She was the Oz author between 1921 and 1939, but this particular letter is from 1965. It is written to author March Laumer in Thompson's standard type-written fashion, with various hand notations. This time the letterhead is an example of Thompson's standard Royal Historian of Oz paper. 

The letter is a chatty one, first apologizing for apparently thinking that March was a girl rather than a man, due to the name. At the time Laumer was serving in Hong Kong in the Marines. Thompson touches on a variety of subjects, including the possibilities of having her manuscript Yankee in Oz published; this wouldn't happen for another ten years, when The International Wizard of Oz Club finally published the story. She encourages Laumer to join the club, and mentions that eight out of every ten letters she receives are from men and boys.

 Perhaps I'll eventually acquire letters from the later Oz authors...as a collector, it's always good to have goals!

Here We Go Again!

Over on LiveAuctioneers, our favorite forgers (Rhyton Galleries) have listed a new crop of fake John R. Neill drawings. But there has finally been a change! These pieces are listed as “John R. Neill (manner of)”, or “John R. Neill (in the style of)”. This is certainly a step in the right direction; past listings included the “manner of” information in the body of the description, but it was not stated outright in the listing title. 

While I’d prefer the pieces not be listed at all, as they are blatant forgery attempts complete with signatures, at least they are now a little less misleading. There also seems to be a new player in the field - Zipriani Galleries, based in Lima, Peru(!). I can only assume this is another outpost of whoever is behind Rhyton, as the drawing offered appears to be done by the same hand on similar paper, and the other offerings from the gallery are dubious at best.

I first became aware of these drawings in 2020. I purchased the first piece I saw offered, in spite of knowing it to be false, as I thought it would be an interesting curiosity. Overall, there have now been 11 examples listed by the gallery - at least, 11 that I’m aware of! The various drawings can be seen below, starting with the current offerings.

The drawing of the smoking man was previously offered but didn’t sell. Unfortunately, that one is still listed simply as “John R. Neill”. The others are new pieces; the Scarecrow drawing is taken from The Scarecrow of Oz, but the original drawing included other characters and was created for the cover of The Oz Toy Book. The drawing of women with pistols was offered by the Neill family several years ago, and the original of the third piece was used in The Bride, Her Wedding Book. This last piece is the one being offered out of Peru. As usual, these have all been given false signatures.

Here we have a drawing from Scarecrow of Oz, a magazine illustration for The Man Who Murdered a Fairy, and an unpublished piece. These drawings show more ambition on the part of the forger - they are considerably more elaborate than the earlier copies of drawings from Wonder City of Oz.

These were the first pieces to pop up - three drawings from Wonder City of Oz, and one from Tik-Tok of Oz. I’ve blogged several times in the past about this problem, as the drawings are good enough to fool an unsuspecting buyer - and they have! I’ll continue to keep an ongoing log of the pieces that turn up.

Be sure to exercise caution if you are considering purchasing a drawing by John R. Neill and have no knowledge of its background!

Pseudo-Neill…Again

I've been negligent with my blogging lately, but in the past I’ve shown a couple fake John R. Neill drawings. These have all been offered at auction by Rhyton Gallery, through LiveAuctioneers.com. It seems these forgeries are going to continue being sold, so I think it’s worthwhile to keep an ongoing record of what has been offered!

 

The last one showed up this past August, but now another has surfaced, bringing the total up to 5 drawings in the past year. Clearly, this isn’t something that’s going away any time soon!

This time is a little different, as the drawing being offered is not a piece that's known to survive. In each of the previous cases, I've known the location of the authentic drawings, and been fairly certain of the various online sources used by the forger to create the fake drawings. This latest example could only have been drawn from a published version of the original.  

The Whirlpool, originally published in The Scarecrow of Oz (1915), would be a stunning Neill drawing in its original form. What's being offered is a reduced version, only 8” x 11”, and it has the same fake signature that has been used on all the Rhyton offerings.