Rinkitink in Oz
Chicago: The Reilly & Lee Co., Circa 1941. Neill, John R. Later printing (Regular Edition). Hardcover. 314pp. Large octavo [23 cm] Blue cloth over boards with the title and a vignette in black ink on the spine, and a bright illustrated paper label mounted to the front cover. Illustrated endpapers. Very good plus condition. The boards are ever so slightly concave, and the bottom edge of the text block has a minor scuff mark. Very slight spine lean. There is a previous owner's bookplate on the front free endsheet, and there is an ownership stamp on the half title page. In a very good dust jacket, with multiple small closed and open tears in the edges. The longest closed tear is 1" long, and the largest open tear is 3/4" wide by 1/4" deep. The jacket's spine is barely perceptible foxed. The top edge of the verso of the jacket has some light damp staining, however this is not visible on the front of the dust jacket. Item #37675
Illustrated by John R. Neill. L. Frank Baum was a businessman, actor, and independent film maker, but his main passion was writing. He published 55 novels, 82 short stories, and more than 200 poems. Baum, born with a weak heart, was timid and shy, and he often spent his time reading in his father's library. Early on he developed a distaste for the usual scary creatures and violence of folklore and popular children's fairy tales of the time and ended up creating his own adaptations of them in order to give other children, including his own eventually, pleasure in stories rather than grim and frightful moral lessons. His incredibly famous Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in the year 1900, received with great success and translated into many different languages. It was quickly adapted as a long-running musical on Broadway in 1903.
Price: $125.00