Cover of The Marvelous Land of Oz

The Marvelous Land of Oz

core novel 1904 Oz

Record

First published1904
Original language EN
Work typenovel
Canon statuscore
Reader rating3.79 (26,826 ratings, collected 2026-09-14)
First-edition ISBN9781782260622
Internal chronology2

Synopsis

In The Marvelous Land of Oz, an orphan boy named Tip flees the household of Mombi, the cruel old witch who raised him, taking with him Jack Pumpkinhead, a wooden creature he has secretly brought to life using one of Mombi's own magical powders. On the road, Tip and his makeshift companion encounter a rebel army of girls marching on the Emerald City under the leadership of General Jinjur, intent on overthrowing the current government. Tip falls in with the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, old friends from Dorothy's earlier adventure, as the three work together to respond to the uprising and restore stable rule to Oz, navigating a land whose politics prove nearly as strange as its magic.

Where it sits

  • Universe: Oz
  • Series: The Oz Books core; position 2 of 14 in the series' recorded order
  • Author: L. Frank Baum

Notes

  • From the series record (The Oz Books): L. Frank Baum's own 14 Oz novels, one continuous author-written saga (1900-1920, the last published posthumously a year after his 1919 death). Registered per the credited-authorship-as-bright-line precedent: Core Canon = Baum's own 14 novels only. Ruth Plumly Thompson (and, later, John R. Neill, Jack Snow, and others) continued the series with an officially licensed further ~26 'Famous Forty' Oz books after Baum's death -- explicitly out of scope (a sprawling multi-author catalogue to register in a later pass rather than all at once); logged as a future candidate for a later pass. No formal literary award existed for children's fantasy in this era; this project's genre-historical-significance precedent (King of Elfland's Daughter, The Worm Ouroboros, Lud-in-the-Mist) applies -- Oz is a foundational work of American fantasy, adapted into the 1902 Broadway musical and the 1939 MGM film.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.

Sources

← Oz dossier · All universes

Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.