The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
core novel 1900 Oz
Record
| First published | 1900 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.00 (525,325 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780907785750 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz opens on a Kansas farm, where young Dorothy and her dog Toto are swept away by a powerful cyclone and carried to the magical Land of Oz, landing in a strange country far from anything she has known. Told that the only way home lies with a powerful wizard in the distant Emerald City, Dorothy sets out along the yellow brick road to find him, gathering companions in need of their own help along the way: a Scarecrow who longs for a brain, a Tin Woodman who wishes for a heart, and a Cowardly Lion seeking courage. Together the unlikely group travels through Oz's varied and sometimes dangerous regions, facing obstacles that test each of their particular wishes on the road to the Emerald City.
Where it sits
- Universe: Oz
- Series: The Oz Books core; position 1 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.
- Reading order, within the series The Oz Books: position 1 of 14: next The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904)
Sources
- Wikipedia: List of Oz books
- FantasticFiction: L. Frank Baum's Oz books in order
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.