The Marvelous Land of Oz — The John R. Neill Illustrated Edition (eBook)

The sequel the children demanded — restored with all of John R. Neill's 1904 art.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz ended, and America's children wrote letters: they wanted "more about the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman." L. Frank Baum answered with The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) — the strangest and funniest of the Oz books, and the one that changed the series forever.

A boy named Tip has run away from the witch Mombi, bringing to life a wooden man with a pumpkin head and a saw-horse along the way. In the Emerald City, the Scarecrow's throne is threatened by General Jinjur and her Army of Revolt — four hundred young women armed with knitting-needles — and the road to saving it runs through the Tin Woodman, Emperor of the Winkies, a Highly Magnified Woggle-Bug, a flying machine called the Gump, and a secret that Glinda's records have kept since before Dorothy ever came to Oz.

This Companion Classics edition restores the book exactly as its first readers saw it: Baum's complete original text — all 24 chapters, cross-checked against the 1904 Reilly & Britton first edition — with John R. Neill's art throughout: all 14 colour plates counted leaf-by-leaf from a first-edition copy (including the sunflower-field frontispiece), the 22 full-page line plates, his designed title page, and his chapter-head designs for every chapter. 64 pieces of art in all.

Inside the companion apparatus, original to this edition:

- An introduction: the letters that forced a sequel into being, and the new illustrator who replaced Denslow

- A Who's Who: Tip, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse, the Woggle-Bug, Mombi, Jinjur, Glinda — and Ozma

- Five explainers, including the 1904 America the book satirizes and a map of the whole fourteen-book series

- A short life of L. Frank Baum and a note on the period

- An appendix census of the plates, verified from the scan

- 56 discussion questions: two for every chapter, plus eight on the whole book — written to be read after each chapter, spoiler-safe

Book 2 of the fourteen Oz books — and the first appearance of Princess Ozma.

A free-standing Companion Classics restoration of the 1904 public-domain edition. This edition is not affiliated with Warner Bros. or the MGM film; no film material appears in it.

THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ — The John R. Neill Illustrated Edition

Author: L. Frank Baum; Editor: Horace Harriott Jr.

Companion Classics