Into the Baumiverse

When I was but a wee lad, due to my times and circumstances, I had no idea about the many, many books that L. Frank Baum had written. In fact, I didn’t have much of a concept of ‘authorship’ as such. Books was books, and an author’s name on the cover meant very little. I still remember my surprise on finding out that The Wizard of Oz had one sequel, let alone twelve others. And of the Ruth Plumly Thompson continuations I hadn’t even a clue for many years, much less a hope of ever reading one. And then learning of his many ‘non-Ozian’ fantasies … my mind began to boggle and flounder.

          But then my childhood years came at a time in popular culture where ‘Fantasy’ – especially hopeful imagining - was in a sort of eclipse. After the Kennedy assassination, candy-colored dreams were out, and Horror, Hard Science Fiction, and Dystopian Worlds were in as far as Imaginative Visions were concerned. Most of popular culture was imbued with violence, treachery, and gritty real-world tragedy.

          But in the later 1970’s, pop culture took a turn back to fantasy and optimism, largely thanks to the Star Wars films. (“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Kameron will often ask me, on many different subjects. “It’s a thing,” I often reply.) By November 1979 Del Rey Fantasy Classics began reprinting the whole series of Oz books, starting with Baum and ending years later with Thompson’s (who wrote more Oz than Baum ever did) continuations. Even Baum’s more obscure works started turning up, and with the print-on-demand age upon us, they have become more readily available.

The Enchanted Island of Yew (or Isle of Yew as the pun-happy Baum would have no doubt have informed us with a chuckle) was published in 1903 – three years after The Wizard – and has been described as Baum’s “most traditional fantasy land setting”. The island is divided into five areas - like Oz – except that the middle kingdom, unlike the Emerald City, is a frightening tyranny. Later mapmakers place it in the Nonestic Ocean in an attempt to connect all of Baum’s imaginary lands.

It may be more traditional, but it contains many of Baum’s elements of gender fluidity and the enigma of identity. One of the resident fairies, tired of centuries of immortal tedium, enlists the aid of three mortal maidens to change into a human male for one year to pursue real adventures. The story follows the new “Prince Marvel” as he straightens out the inhabitants of Yew, among whom are the Twi, who exist basically as one person in two bodies. He sows confusion when he separates the Twi for a while, almost as if Baum were predicting the effects of severing the connection of the two halves of the brain.  

John Dough and the Cherub (1906) is much more in the Oz tradition, although it begins in the United States. John Dough is a life-sized gingerbread man baked as a window-advertisement, who is accidentally brought to life by “the Great Elixir” being mixed into his dough. The villainous Ali Dubh who has supplied the potion knows how to rectify the error – he will merely eat the gingerbread man and absorb his powers! John Dough flees and begins an adventure that will lead him through several magic land.   

In the land of Phreex he meets Chick the Cherub, “the Original Incubator Baby”, a character of indeterminate age and gender, who is genial and brave and becomes John’s helpful and friendly traveling companion as they journey through lands peopled with Baum’s usual cast of animated oddities, talking animals, strange races, and pretty girls. Eventually John Dough and Chick wind up as rulers of their own country. This book is more firmly tied to Oz as the two make a cameo appearance in The Road to Oz (1909) and a Mifket – one of the strange races introduced here – makes an appearance in Rinkitink in Oz (1916). Illustrations by John R. Neill further place it even more firmly into the Baum universe.

I am sorry I can only, as of yet, offer these general facts and outlines, but I hope to read the books soon!