White Edition Wednesday - DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD

Last Wednesday we looked at Ozma of Oz and today we examine Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz - and since this title has more changes than usual for the white editions, let's get right to it!

I think this is one of Dick Martin's more striking covers. I especially like the bright red that unifies the design. The front cover is based on Neill's original pictorial cover label (at right). The piglet on the spine is from The Oz Toy Book (1916). The back cover has always been a favorite of mine, too. I can remember staring at it for hours when I was little, fascinated by Eureka in the cage and wearing that amazing suit, and wondering why a cat prisoner had a little pistol. Perhaps she would have used it had the trial gone worse than it did. The image is from one of Neill's best color plates in the 1907 edition.

Dick Martin radically altered the fore matter to this title, so we'll start on the very first page of the "white edition." For the "Famous Oz books" ad Dick used the drawing from the original half-title page. For some reason he redrew it - it's subtle but it's clearly been redrawn from scratch. (See below)

1907 half-title at left - Dick Martin redraw at right.

Dick Martin's choice for the new ownership leaf is especially odd. The one seen below left is the original 1907 version showing Dorothy and Eureka. In 1916 the text was re-imposed and the original ownership leaf was replaced with one from Rinkitink in Oz (below center). Oddly, Dick Martin chose a surprisingly generic image from John R. Neill's picture book series "The Children's Own Books," (below right) rather than restoring the original 1907 ownership leaf in the "white edition."

1907 first edition at left -  center image circa 1916-1965 - white edition at right.

However, that image may have led Dick to the discovery of a little-known drawing Neill had done for Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz in 1907 that had not made it into the original edition.

1980 "Children's Own Books" advertisement and half-title page.

And Dick turned that image into the new "white edition" half-title page - the first time this picture was ever printed in the book it was drawn for! The small image of the Wizard facing the new half title is a redrawn portion of the chapter heading for Chapter Thirteen.

The "white edition" frontispiece is a new black and white drawing by Dick Martin based on one of Neill's original color plates.

Dick was able to use nine of the original sixteen color plates in the 1965 "white edition" if you count the back cover. Most are like the above example where Dick just traced and inked the original image, but for the charming picture of Dorothy facing page one, Dick used only a portion of the original plate. (See below)

Here are a couple more examples. When I was a kid it never occurred to me that these drawings were stylistically off from Neill. To my eyes now they seem very cartoony and modern - especially the one below, featuring the Wizard giving Gwig "what for."

One reason Dick added these black and white "color plates" to this title and didn't for the other titles is that Dorothy and the Wizard is the shortest Oz book by page count. The story isn't shorter, but Neill did less artwork, so it's always been a thinner volume. And as far as page count goes, the original edition included the sixteen color plates (both fronts and backs) in the pagination; thus the first edition text ends on page 256. The "white edition" pagination, even with all Dick's new artwork and beginning the page numbers on the first page of text, only allows the "white edition" to reach page 220 on the final page of text.

A few other little changes occur at the end of the book. Dick omitted the tail-piece of Ozma gazing out the window. Dick created a new "The End" illustration after the last of the ads by combining several different images of the piglets.

There are two mystery images in the book - let's see if my reader's can place them. One is the fine Neill illustration facing the "To My Readers" page. It looks like some images I've seen for John R. Neill bookplates.

The other is this little guy. He appears on the new title page Dick prepared. He doesn't look Neillish to me - nor very Dick Martin either, for that matter. Does anyone recognize him?

Bibliographic Oddities

Like most of the "white editions," the earliest copies of the book list all forty Oz books in the ad at the beginning of the book. Later copies reduce the list to Baum's fourteen. However, at least two copies of the "white edition" have been reported that have old 1950s text blocks in them. It doesn't seem at all unlikely that Reilly & Lee might have had some unbound text blocks hanging around in storage and bound them up in fancy new "white edition" covers. And if they did this with Dorothy and the Wizard, perhaps they did it with other Oz titles, too! It may be simply that the revised Dorothy and the Wizard text is just different enough that someone noticed this publishing oddity. So check all of your white editions as we go along and do let me know if you have any older editions bound up in "white edition" covers.

Well, that's it for today. Next week we'll take a walk down The Road to Oz.