This is a remarkable, beautiful, clean copy of the first edition. The original story may surprise readers, with silver shoes instead of ruby slippers, and an Emerald City that is green only because the visitors must wear colored goggles. Yet over the years Dorothy's journey with her motley friends has proven fertile soil for a variety of new interpretations, including THE WIZ (1978) and WICKED (1995), demonstrating its power as a modern mythos. The Oz books offered a dream world for the children of Manifest Destiny, emigrating across the West. Baum has a complicated legacy: he was also a newspaperman whose opinions on Native American rights were especially pernicious. Denslow and Baum would soon part acrimoniously over the share of the profits (Denslow purchased, no joke, an island from his) the rest of the Oz books in Baum's lifetime were illustrated by John R.

Their instinct was right: the book quickly became the fastest selling children's book in the United States, and was soon turned into a sensation at the theater. The expense turned publishers away until Baum and Denslow took the gamble to pay for the printing costs themselves. Denslow envisioned an elaborate production of color-printed plates to reflect the role that color plays in the story. Although it was only one of four books Baum published in 1900, THE WIZARD OF OZ was his most ambitious as a publication: he and illustrator W.W. First edition, second state, of the classic American fairy tale, a remarkably beautiful copy.

Dorothy and the wizard of oz book 1908