Ozma of Oz — The Neill Illustrated Edition (Companion Classics) [EPUB]

OZMA OF OZ — The John R. Neill Illustrated Edition

Dorothy Gale is going back — she just doesn't know it yet. Blown overboard in a storm on the voyage to Australia, she washes ashore in the Land of Ev in a chicken coop, with a yellow hen named Billina who can suddenly talk — and who has strong opinions about breakfast. Ev is not Oz, and its wonders are stranger: a clockwork man named Tiktok, wound up with three keys and warranted for a thousand years; a princess, Langwidere, who keeps thirty heads in cupboards and would like to add Dorothy's to the collection; and, across the desert, a royal family in enchanted exile. The Queen of Ev and her ten children were sold by King Evoldo to the Nome King, who turned them into ornaments in his underground palace — and Princess Ozma of Oz, crossing the Deadly Desert on a magic carpet at the head of her army, has come to demand them back. The Nome King smiles, and offers a bargain: enter the palace, guess which ornaments the Ev family have become, and free one with every right touch — eleven guesses each. Guess wrong too often, and the palace gains new ornaments. It will take a hen, hiding under a throne, to learn the secret the King never meant to tell: purple for Ev, green for Oz, and gold for the two who are neither.

L. Frank Baum's third Oz book (1907) is the one where the series becomes a world — Dorothy's return, Ozma's first campaign as ruler, and the introduction of Tiktok, the wind-up Mechanical Man who has been called one of literature's first robots. This Companion Classics edition is built from the 1907 Reilly & Britton first edition: all forty-one of John R. Neill's colour plates — including the frontispiece — restored from that printing, together with both full-page line plates, the thirty-nine text illustrations, and Neill's decorated chapter head for every one of the twenty-one chapters. Baum's own spelling is kept throughout: the clockwork man's name is Tiktok, exactly as Baum and his label printed it.

The companion apparatus, written for this edition, includes an introduction (Dorothy's return, and how this book widened Oz forever), a Who's Who of the cast — Dorothy, Billina, Tiktok, Ozma, the Nome King, Princess Langwidere, the Hungry Tiger, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion — explainers on the first edition, on Tiktok and the word "robot," on the countries around Oz, and on the rules of the guessing game, a short life of Baum, a note on the period, a census of all the plates, a series map of all fourteen Oz books, and fifty discussion questions fenced chapter by chapter so nothing is spoiled early.

21 chapters · 38,114 words · The complete 1907 text with all of John R. Neill's art restored · Public domain worldwide · Not affiliated with Warner Bros. or MGM; no film material is used.