‘The Marvelous Land of Oz’ is L. Frank Baum’s thrilling follow-up to his smash-hit book ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.’
Instead of Dorothy this time around, the hero of this tale is a young orphan -Tip – who has lived all his life in the northern part of Oz called Gillikin Country under a tyrannical witch named Mombi. Tip attempts to play a prank on Mombi by scaring her with a stuffed man with a carved pumpkin head (who he calls, appropriately, ‘Jack Pumpkinhead’), but after an angry Mombi animates Jack with her ‘Powder of Life’ and vows to punish Tip, the young man flees the Gillikin Country with Jack in tow to make his way to the Emerald City.
What follows is a wild tale filled with fantastical creatures, magic spells and two familiar figures – the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman from the original Oz book. ’The Marvelous Land of Oz’ is the second of thirteen Oz books that Baum would pen in his career and is a favorite among fans of the series. It is presented here in its original and unabridged format.
About the author
L. Frank Baum was born Lyman Frank Baum on May 15, 1856, the seventh of nine children of Benjamin and Cynthia Ann Baum. Baum’s father was enormously successful and Lyman grew up on the family’s huge estate – Rose Lawn- in Pennsylvania. Interested in writing from an early age, he managed to persuade his father to purchase a cheap printing press which he and his brother Harry used to produce a local journal, the Rose Lawn Home Journal. But his early love was the theatre and as a young man, Baum performed often as ‘Louis F. Baum’ and ‘George Brooks.’ Eventually, his father bought him a theater in Richburg, NY where he wrote scripts and gathered a company together to perform them. While on tour with one of his plays, the Richburg theater burned to the ground, along with the only known copies of Baum’s scripts. In 1882, Baum married Maud Gage and moved to the Dakota Territory, where he failed in business as a store owner. His literary ‘Kansas’ was said to be based on his time in drought-ridden South Dakota. Baum continued writing, achieving moderate success with his book ‘Mother Goose in Prose’ in 1897. But in 1900, he published ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, ‘ which became a phenomenon. He would eventually write thirteen additional Oz books and brought ‘The Wizard of Oz’ to the stage as well, where it ran on Broadway and toured America. Baum never stopped writing and, upon his death following a stroke in 1919, Baum had completed 41 novels (apart from the Oz books), 83 short stories, 200 poems at at least 42 scripts. He is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
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