Map of Oz Monday - To Help You Find the Way to Oz

Circa 1949 to 1959

The Map of Oz Monday series has been one of my most followed blog threads. While I have yet to complete my discussion of the various iterations of the Oz Club's maps (I promise I will get back to it!), I am delighted to offer a rather different installment today.

About ten days ago Eric and I were contacted by an elderly woman who wanted to know if we were interested in a book she had to sell. It was a copy of the 1949-1959 edition of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz with the rather ugly cover label from that era. I actually didn't own a copy of that edition, as I always found it rather, well, ugly. But this copy was in beautiful condition and had its dust jacket. I offered her a fair price and the deal seemed to be complete. 

But then she mentioned she also had a tattered Map of Oz, partially colored in with crayons and pens, and which also had some "writing" on it, which she mentioned, I think, as a possible defect. Being an Oz map buff, I asked for a scan and she kindly supplied one.

Click to Enlarge

This is what used to be thought of as the "Coloring Contest Map," and I originally blogged about it under that name. But a few weeks after my original post I obtained a scan of the "ACTUAL Coloring Contest Map." Click on either link to read those earlier posts.

As you see on the "LAND OF OZ" side, there's a bit of crayoning in the Emerald City. A minor defect, but I already own a fine condition copy of this map. But turn the map over to the "SURROUNDING COUNTRIES" side and one sees a good deal more crayoning and some outlining of the river systems in pen.

Click to Enlarge

But what's that writing in the top right corner? 

Why, it's a cheery and cozy wish from Ruth Plumly Thompson herself! Needless to say, I bought the map, as well as the copy of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. Eric and I felt a need to be ethical, so we told the woman what and whose the handwriting was. She was very grateful that we were honest, and we worked out a very fair price.

It then developed that the woman had a large collection of letters from various children's authors she had written to as a young teen in the mid-1950s. She now wished to find the letters a good home and make some extra money. 

I will be helping her sell that collection over the coming weeks. She has letters, ephemera, and a few photos from the likes of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lois Lenski, Maud Hart Lovelace, Marguerite Henry, Stephen W. Meader, illustrator Wesley Dennis, Helen Fuller Orton, Marguerite de Angeli, and early science fiction author and author of many books on dogs and horses Col. S. P. Meek. There is also a 1934 letter to her father from President Roosevelt, and a long letter from poet Winifred Rawlins, including a hand-written poem called "Winter Solstice."

I will be selling the letters over the coming weeks on eBay. If you are interested in any of the letters, you can check my eBay seller name: hungrytigerboy over the next month or so - or drop me a message and I'll let you know when any particular letter is listed for sale.

The kind woman who is selling the letters and who sold me the book and map said she had no recollection of how or when she obtained the map. She didn't know who Ruth Plumly Thompson was and had never written to her. Possibly that copy of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz was sent to her as a gift from a relative near Philadelphia and Thompson had done a local signing of maps? The map was found folded in quarters, laid inside the book.

In any case, the map has found a fine home now - mine!

If you would like to read the entire Map of Oz Monday series CLICK HERE to start at the beginning. Follow thru links appear at the end of each blog post to take you to the next entry.

Copyright © 2024 David Maxine. All rights reserved.

The Royal Book of Oz!

The Royal Book of Oz is making a triumphant return to the bookshelves of the world!

Ruth Plumly Thompson circa early 1960s.

There's a super new publishing project beginning by the newly founded Clover Press. They are repackaging the Ruth Plumly Thompson Oz books, with new illustrations. The Royal Book of Oz is the first entry, of course  - and you can be a part of it through their Kickstarter campaign!

Click here to check out the project!

New cover design by illustrator Sara Richard.

Eric Shanower has written a new foreword and there are lots of cool premiums, too: signed boxed editions, lunch boxes, postcards, lapel pins, and more. Come on, help bring the second Royal Historian of Oz to a whole new generation of kids! 

Oz about it?

Click here to support the project!

Merry Christmas from Gimbel Brothers!

Happy Holidays! How'd you like to read a little-known chapter in Oz history? Well, it is presented below as written in a beautiful full-page ad for Gimbel Brothers' Department Store in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 12, 1920.

Well, well, Boys and Girls - the "secret's out" - Santa Claus rented, no borrowed, no, was given a great big part of the Land of Oz on which was the biggest cave you ever saw, and there he worked for three hundred days to make your Christmas toys. Then he said to the Wizard of OZ, "All's ready. Let's go," and the Wizard summoned Mombi, the Witch, who went to the Cave and sprinkles the "Powder of Life" over the toys, lifted her left hjand with its little finger pointed upward and mumbled: "Weaugh - Teaugh - Peaugh" and goodness me! those toys cried out: "We live - We live! - We live!!

Then the wizard waved his hat and all of the Land of OZ was swept through the air just like Dorothy and Zeb and the horse were, and down, down, down the people and toys fell. After three days and three night they came to the Gimbel Land of Toys and took possession - and are to stay 'till - Oh! I almost forgot, I promised the Wizard and Santa Claus not to tell.

The Joy of the Land of OZ is Eternal Youth

Everybody is young. Mombi has a new charm, the "Powder of Youth," which she uses on every old grouch she can find. Here ten is ten, and seventy years fall away from eighty just like the Wicked Witch melted away. We're all boys and girls together.

And everybody's here - all your old friends - dear Jack Pumpkinhead, the brainy Scarecrow, the good-hearted Tin Woodman and Dorothy and the Wizard and Tip and Toto - oh, just everybody to welcome you, to walk with you, to play with you in this fairyful Land of OZ.

I must tell you about Santa Claus and the Royal Ponies and the others - it's something like this -

There is a lot of other fun stuff to read in this great vintage advertisement. Click on the full-page image below and it will expand to an easily readable size. I am wondering if this might be the earliest Oz writing of Ruth Plumly Thompson. She was still writing her "Children's Page" the the Public Ledger so she was working at the paper when this ad appeared. The writer clearly knew the Oz books, despite a few inaccuracies in the ad copy. I am not sure if Thompson had signed her contract with Reilly & Lee yet either. If she had already signed on, I think it even more likely she might have written the ad copy.

Despite my wishful thinking, I don't think it sounds particularly Thompson-like. But it's a fun and pretty spiffy ad! Look at the six little drawings above the six boxes in the middle of the page. They almost look like "give-away" pins!

A few other things to notice: The ad lists and promotes The Wizard of Oz right along with the rest of the Oz series despite being available from different publishers. And the main drawing at the bottom of the page is adapted from the endpapers of Glinda of Oz which had only been published a few months earlier on July 10, 1920.

Oz advertisement in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 12, 1920 - Click to enlarge.

They sure don't write ad copy like they used to! Happy Holidays!

Map of Oz Monday - Ojo Mojo

OK, boys and girls, we are setting off on a major hike through the Munchkin Country today. And Ojo and Realbad and Snufferbux are going to be our guides! Luckily Ojo has brought along the Oz maps created by L. Frank Baum and Ruth Plumly Thompson, and Snufferbux has his copies of the relevant texts.

Together we're gonna try to untangle what I see as the one terrible error on the Oz Club's maps, and that is the shifting of Ojo's and Doctor Pipt's homes to the northern Munchkin Country. Baum's map (and text) has them in the southern Munchkin Country.

Granted, there is a textual contradiction in Baum's The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914). In short, the club maps chose to honor a totally unimportant slip of the pen by Baum (a reference to the Gillikin Country) and thus made hash of the story logic (and often explicit detail) of Baum's Patchwork Girl and Ruth Plumly Thompson's Ojo in Oz (1933).

I will be getting into Baum's text in detail. But here's what we're talking about.

Baum's map on left, Club map on right - Click to enlarge.

On the left is Baum's map showing Ojo in the South near the Quadling border; on the right is the Club's map showing Ojo in the north with Dr. Pipt's mountain on the Gillikin border. Exactly who pushed for this change is not known. At least originally, Jim Haff followed the bulk of Baum's story and kept Ojo in the south as you can see in his master research map, below. (Remember that the Club maps show east on the right hand side of the map.)

Jim Haff's placement of Ojo in the south on his original "research" map.

In all likelihood it was either Fred Meyer or Dick Martin that "corrected" Jim's careful research and argued for shifting Ojo and Pipt to the north. Fred had a persnickety obsession with certain details and I can imagine him focusing in on that word "Gillikin" and not letting go. Dick Martin seems to me to have approached the maps from an "ease of drawing" perspective much of the time. And the northern section of Haff's Munchkin Country was kind of empty and it's also possible that Dick urged the move to simply fill up that space on the map. This is all conjecture; we simply don't know at this point what happened, only that Jim Haff's careful design was radically altered.

This may seem like a big fuss over nothing. What does it matter that one map shows Ojo in the north and another shows Ojo in the south? Well, it turns out to matter a lot, much more than I even realized from an Oz history perspective. In the Oz Club choice, all you gain is the chance to honor Baum's unimportant slip of the pen, "Gillikin."

But I think much was lost by that choice. Whereas, if Ojo and Dr. Pipt are in the south, innumerable details in the stories of both Patchwork Girl and Ojo in Oz make sense in story-telling logic and in geographical unity. This should not be surprising when we now know Baum had already mapped the Land of Oz sometime in late 1912 or early 1913, according to Gottschalk, and we know that Thompson was using the text of Patchwork Girl (and both Baum's and her own maps) in the writing of Ojo in Oz, as you will see further below.

Let me take you on a tour through the southern Munchkin Country! We'll explore both the various texts and the various maps.

The trouble begins when Ojo and Unc Nunkie run out of food and have to leave their humble cottage deep in the dismal Blue Forest. Ojo says, "All I've ever seen of the great Land of Oz, Unc Dear, is the view of that mountain over at the south, where they say the Hammerheads live . . . and that other mountain at the north, where they say nobody lives."

Unc Nunkie reminds Ojo that the Crooked Magician Dr. Pipt and his wife live on that mountain at the north. Ojo continues, "They live high up on the mountain, and the good Munchkin Country, where the fruits and flowers grow, is just on the other side."

So Ojo and Unc Nunkie set out from their cottage in the Blue Forest, heading north to get to the good part of the Munchkin Country that lies on the other side of Dr. Pipt's mountain.

Here we come to Baum's slip of the pen where he writes:

At the foot of the mountain that separated the Country of the Munchkins from the Country of the Gillikins, the path divided.  One way led to the left and the other to the right — straight up the mountain. Unc Nunkie took this right-hand path and Ojo followed without asking why. He knew it would take them to the house of the Crooked Magician, whom he had never seen but who was their nearest neighbor.

Baum should not have written that phrase about the Country of the Gillikins. He has already explained that Doctor Pipt's mountain is separating Ojo and Nunkie's home from the more fruitful plains of the Munchkin Country, these fertile fields being Ojo and Nunkie's destination. Based on Baum's previous text detail, the paragraph should have said something like: "At the foot of the mountain that separated the fertile fields of the Munchkins from the Blue Forest, the path divided."

Remember Ojo and Nunkie are explicitly journeying from their home, where they have no food, to the good part of the Munchkin Country. And remember, too, they are not journeying to visit Doctor Pipt. The Doctor is just a rest stop on the journey over the mountain barrier.

Back to the story . . . Unc Nunkie and Ojo take the right-hand path up the mountain. It must be a rough or steep climb, because they made it from home to the bottom of the mountain by early morning, yet they will be trudging up the mountain most of the day. They stop for lunch at noon and then hike for another two hours before arriving at Doctor Pipt's.

After the Liquid of Petrifaction accident, Ojo, Scraps, and Bungle decide to set off to find a cure. They continue on the path over the mountain, the same route Ojo and Nunkie always planned to take, into the fertile fields of the Munchkin Country. Baum writes: "Ojo had never traveled before and so he only knew that the path down the mountainside led into the open Munchkin Country, where large numbers of people dwelt."

After reaching the foot of the mountain they come to a brook which Scraps jumps across. They journey on, and shortly before sundown they meet a Munchkin Woodchopper who invites them to spend the night. They decline, as Ojo wants to press on with their journey. They walk late into the night, eventually coming to the house with the disembodied voice. The next day, after encountering the live phonograph, they meet the Foolish Owl and Wise Donkey (the latter says he is from Mo). They then free the Woozy and finally arrive at the Yellow Brick Road. This is not Dorothy's Yellow Brick Road but another one.

Now you might be asking, why did you cover all of that stuff in so much detail? What does it have to do with maps? Well, my friends, allow me to show you!  The events described above fit quite wonderfully into the pre-Oz Club maps! And with some surprising synchronicity, IMHO!

Below is Baum's 1914 Oz map. I have added indicated the paths (as described in Baum's text) in yellow, showing the the path from Ojo's house to the base of the mountain that separates Ojo and Nunkie from the fertile plains of the Munchkin Country. You can see the fork, where the path divides. Ojo and Nunkie took the right-hand path up the mountain to Doctor Pipt.

Narrow yellow line shows paths in the Blue Forest and path followed by Ojo to the YBR

I also added in the "second" Yellow Brick Road as it was not shown on Baum's map. It would obviously not be so straight, but this is more of a diagram to show how well Baum's text can be plugged into his own map of Oz. Note that there is even a "brook" or river for Scraps to jump across after they get down out of the mountain. This brook is on the original map; I only added the yellow path and road.

I firmly believe Baum wrote the Patchwork Girl text using his Oz map as a guide, though the map would not be published until the next year's Oz book, Tik-Tok of Oz (1914). We already have evidence that Baum drew the map in late 1912 or so (see this previous blog post). But in another unidentified 1913 newspaper interview Baum states: "the Land of Oz has grown to be a very real place to me. I have even mapped it all out, and its characters are known to me quite intimately."

Let's add another layer into all this. Ruth Plumly Thompson had clearly reread Baum's Patchwork Girl of Oz in preparation for writing her "sequel" Ojo in Oz. Below is Thompson's map of Oz. It is a tracing of Baum's 1914 map in which she has worked in the locations from her own Oz titles. I have added in essentially identical versions of the paths and Yellow Brick Road.

Thompson's map showing Ojo and Dr. Pipt and her own Bandit's Forest and Seebania from OJO IN OZ.

I think this map shows Thompson wrote Ojo in Oz using the 1914 Baum map as reference. And she has placed Seebania (the kingdom Unc Nunkie and the infant Ojo fled) just to the left of the Blue Forest where Ojo and Nunkie lived. And look where a path to the left would lead on Thompson's map - toward Seebania! No wonder Unc Nunkie avoided it.

Now what I also love about Thompson's geography here is that it justifies why (from an Oz history perspective) there is a second Yellow Brick Road and what two places it connects. The Baum and Thompson geography in Patchwork Girl and Ojo strongly allows for this Yellow Brick Road to connect the Emerald City with the old capital of the Munchkin Country, Seebania! This may well be constructive conjecture on my part, but there can be no dismissing the fact that Thompson meant Ojo's home and Seebania to be in the same general vicinity.

Below is a similarly modified version of Walt Spouse's beautifully detailed "Wonderland of Oz Map" showing the paths and Yellow Brick Road. I have added in Seebania (where Thompson has positioned it) and labeled the "brook" that Scraps jumps over.

Modified version of Walt Spouse's 1932 "Wonderland of Oz" map.

There are many subtle details from both books that can take on added significance once one begins to see the entire geographical picture. Of course Unc Nunkie avoided the "left-hand" path on the way to the fertile Munchkin fields; he knew it went to Seebania. When the Wise Donkey informs Ojo and the gang that he is from Mo, it's not surprising when one realizes Mo is just across the desert from nearby Jinxland, as The Scarecrow of Oz (1916) makes clear.

I think it makes much more sense for Dr. Pipt to have moved almost as far as he could from his old home in the Gillikin Country (where he knew Mombi) to the very desolate southern corner of the Munchkin Country. And in kind, it makes more sense to me that elderly Unc Nunkie, who fled the court of Seebania with a literal babe in arms, took refuge in the dark Blue Forest in the first empty cottage he came upon. 

Now, I do not particularly think L. Frank Baum or Ruth Plumly Thompson necessarily worked this all out in this kind of detail. But a literary fantasy land finds a life of its own as layer upon layer of fictional history is built up, as maps get modified, as characters grow - whether looking for adventure or searching for their pasts.

I think Jim Haff understood this. He brought his professional skills as a cartographer to this project, and as we'll see in the coming posts, he largely succeeded in compiling the various bits of research into a logical, geographic whole. Note that I'm not certain whether Haff paid any attention to Thompson's hand-drawn map of Oz. Still, his Munchkin Country generally followed most of the story points above. Here's my yellow schematic laid over his "research" map:

He has Ojo and Doctor Pipt in the far southern Munchkin Country, Ojo must journey over the mountain (visiting with Doctor Pipt at the summit) then down into the fields of the Munchkin Country. He has even got the Yellow Brick Road essentially connecting the old capital of the Munchkin Country (Seebania) with the Emerald City. This is because he followed the story logic and geographic sense. (Here the "left-hand path" through the forest is unresolved, but since Baum never specified where that path leads, Haff made no error there.)

Sadly, someone convinced Haff that that single word "Gillikin" mattered; and that wrecked the entire geographical and story-telling logic of two books. Here is the way the beginnings of Ojo's journey look on the published Oz Club map.

Ojo's route (indicated in red) to the Yellow Brick Road on the Oz Club map.

So, Ojo and Unc Nunkie want to get from their home to the fertile plains of the Munchkin Country. So they journey in the opposite direction of the fertile plains and climb a steep mountain for no reason. Ojo visits Doctor Pipt whom they were not particularly going to see, climbs back down the mountain, and hikes on over to the Yellow Brick Road. This seems a bit nonsensical to me, but, joy! - at least the other side of Doctor Pipt's mountain is in the Gillikin Country!

When Ojo and Nunkie's cottage was shifted to the north, that choice led to a major reshuffling of much else in the Munchkin Country. Back when Haff had Ojo and Nunkie's cottage in the south he had placed the majority of the locations from Ojo in Oz (1933) in the north. Below is the relevant section of Haff's original map:

Haff's "research" map - Routes of OJO IN OZ: Ojo's party indicated in yellow; Dorothy's party in red.

Haff's "research" map puts these Ojo in Oz locations to the north of the Yellow Brick Road used in The Wizard of Oz, the orange line at the bottom of the image. The route followed by Ojo and Realbad I've indicated in yellow: Crystal Mountain, Tappy Town, Unicorners, and finally Moojer Mountain. And the route of Dorothy and her rescue party I've indicated in red: arrival in the Blue Forest, traveling the Rolling Road to Dickseyland, and then the route Reachard leads them on toward the Emerald City, though they run smack into Moojer Mountain before they get there.

I don't really see why Haff placed these locales in the northern Munchkin Country. But when he moved Ojo to the north in the published club map all of this Ojo in Oz stuff moved to the south. I suspect this is Dick Martin trying to keep the density of "map detail" well spread out. Once they moved Ojo's and Pipt's cottages to the north there was a paucity of detail in the southern Munchkin Country. But from an "Oz as a real place" perspective, simply filling up empty space is a dumb reason, IMHO.

Below you can see how this affected the routes from Ojo in Oz on the 1962 version of the Oz Club's map.

1962 Club map - Routes of OJO IN OZ: Ojo's party indicated in yellow; Dorothy's party in red.

All this is now far to the south of the Yellow Brick Road from The Wizard of Oz. For some reason, too, Dorothy's group (red) is now traveling north of Ojo and Realbad's group (yellow). I can't see the reason for this change. But on the whole, I do prefer that this is all so much closer to Seebania than the original Haff layout had it. It makes for a geographical unity. Of course there would be even more geographical unity if they had left Ojo and Nunkie in the south where they belong.

In later versions of the Oz Club maps (1967 and on) this area gets heavily reworked yet again. I'm not keen on Haff's shifting the arrival of Dorothy's party to a different forest, the one where she met the Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion back in The Wizard of Oz. This change seems to have been made to angle the Rolling Road so that it can dump Dorothy and her rescue party into the river, as described in the text of Ojo in Oz (see below).

2008 Club map - Routes of OJO IN OZ: Ojo's party indicated in yellow; Dorothy's party in red.

As you  might have noticed, this section of the Munchkin Country is now a lot denser, too. All of the many locations from Merry Go Round in Oz were added to the map in 1967.

There are some other Ojo-related glitches and omissions from the Club's map, too. There is no river for the unicorns to bathe in, the fairly large village that Ojo and Realbad pass through is not on the map, and various mountains seen by the travelers are nowhere to be seen. The biggest mistake still not discussed is that the Oz Club's map places the Bandit's Cave in the northern central Munchkin Country. The bandit's cave is not actually on Haff's "research" map, so its inclusion in the published map may have been a late decision.

It it pretty clear Thompson wanted the Bandit's Cave in the same vicinity as the other locales from Patchwork Girl and Ojo. She has shown the Bandit's Cave (though she calls it "Bandit's Forest") on her map, directly above the "U" in QUADLING. [Update: it is also possible to view the "Bandit's Forest" on Thompson's map as being the hideout of Vaga and his men in Grampa in Oz. See "comments" below.] But in any case, this southern location for the Badit's cave in Ojo in Oz is very strongly implied in the text. Mooj throws Realbad into a deep ravine near the castle of Seebania. Realbad is rescued by the bandits and taken back to their cave, where he is nursed back to health.

But Haff has placed the Bandit's Cave in the central northern section of the Munchkin Country, quite far from Seebania. This seems like quite a trek for the bandits to carry an injured Realbad! The clear implication in Thompson's text is that the bandits and their cave are relatively close to Seebania. Indeed, at the end of Ojo in Oz Realbad decides to make the Bandit's Cave a sort of Royal Hunting Lodge where he will spend two months each year, and he allows Snufferbux the bear to use it for hibernation each winter. Clearly Thompson thought that the Bandit's Cave was close to Seebania and under Realbad's jurisdiction, not on the other side of the Munchkin Country.

I went back and looked at Thompson's map and after my recent rereading of Ojo in Oz I am convinced she was using the map in her text descriptions. She has given us a lot of detail on the boundaries of Seebania:

Long ago . . . the Kings of Seebania ruled all the southern part of the Munchkin Country, and the city where you now find yourselves is Shamsbad, the capital. When Ozma succeeded to the throne . . . my father, then King of Seebania . . . relinquished [his claim] to all the small countries at the south and retired within the borders of Seebania itself. This kingdom, still an immense but little known tract of wild forest land, is bounded on the north by the Munchkin River and on the south by the Quadling Country.

Below is Thompson's hand-drawn map, with color added to reflect what she has described in the Ojo in Oz text above. There is a river to serve as the north border, the Quadling Country is to the south, and it is an immense tract of forest land when compared to the usual size of minor countries in Oz. Given Realbad's view that the Bandit's Cave is part of his domain I extended the light blue area of Seebania to include it. This way of viewing this map even has a Yellow Brick Road connecting Seebania to the Emerald City. Thompson has, of course, traced Baum's 1914 map as her starting point and Baum clearly meant the Yellow Brick Road shown here to be that of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. But I think the point has been made that we can get a pretty clear view of how Thompson saw her Ojo in Oz geography.

Thompson's Map of Oz showing Seebania as she described it in her OJO IN OZ text.

I am by no means saying there is only one solution to making an accurate map of Oz, but the Oz Club map makers seem to have never even considered this sort of contextual information. And in the end, considering the high-profile status the Oz Club maps have achieved, I think it is sort of a shame.

But then again, if the club's maps were perfect, look at all the fun I'd have missed writing this huge time-sap of a blog post!

---

And after all that, how about an end note! I should mention the one other innocuous reason that I have seen given for moving Ojo to the north so I don't have to address this in the "comments."

When Ojo and Scraps meet the Scarecrow on the Yellow Brick Road the Scarecrow says he is on his way to visit Jinjur.
While this Jinjur reference is clearly more that a slip of the pen by Baum, it is also easily solved on the map. Baum's text shows Ojo and Co. are just inside the green area of the Emerald City. On Jim Haff's "research" map he has the two Yellow Brick Roads merge just after they reach these green lands. So the Scarecrow can indeed be walking away from the city to visit Jinjur without her having to live on the southern Yellow Brick Road (see Haff's map below).

Jinjur will find herself the focus of several legitimate "map" debates, but we'll save all that for a future post.

Map of Oz Monday - Thompson's Map Part II

As I was saying . . . Ruth Plumly Thompson's three hand-drawn maps are very important in exploring the cartography of the Land of Oz and its surroundings. Part I (click here to read) explored the map Thompson sent to Oz fan Henry Blossom in 1938. That map was a tracing of Thompson's own reference map below.

Click to Enlarge

Reports suggest Thompson was marking up this map in the hopes that publisher Reilly & Lee would update the old Oz maps drawn in 1914 to show her Oz countries and locales. She has added in details from the Baum books that had not made it into the 1914 maps as well. Thompson's 1938 tracing (here) is virtually identical to this map, but that map makes it much easier to see the finer details. The only substantial change in the map above is the addition of Red Top Mountain from 1939's Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz. The caption in The Baum Bugle where this map was first printed mistakenly suggests that Thompson had inked in the words "Red Ink Mt," but comparing the handwriting, it clearly says "Red Top Mt" and is obviously just an addition to the map by Thompson once Ozoplaning had been written.

Of much more interest is Thompson's hand-corrected revision of the map of the countries surrounding Oz shown below.

Click to Enlarge

The center section of the map is missing. There is some indication that what survives and is shown above is actually a pair of photocopies - possibly made for James E. Haff and Dick Martin when they were developing the Oz Club maps. Anyway, on to the discussion!

One of the most interesting aspects of the map is that Thompson has put so much detail into the map from Baum's non-Oz fantasies. Several locations from Baum's John Dough and the Cherub are newly added. She has marked in the capital of Hiland and Loland, appropriately placing it on the border of the two countries. She added in the "Realm of the Fairy Beavers," and she has added in Phreex and the Island of Romance, though she has called it the Palace of Romance here.  I am fairly certain she is not adding in the location from Jack Snow's Magical Mimics in Oz.

Sadly she is working off the flawed map where Hiland and Loland are not drawn as the island they are supposed to be. Phreex should be its own island - not a locale between Hiland and Merryland. That said, she has created a "coastline" for the Mifkets and placed "Castle Isle" offshore a ways. Is this the Duke of Dork's Castle Boat - or some place from John Dough I'm forgetting? She has also added her "Castle Boat" in the Nonestic Ocean proper in the upper right hand corner of the map.

Thompson also added in lots of detail from Baum's Dot and Tot in Merryland, or at least close approximations: Clown's Country, Valley of Dolls, Valley of Lost Things, Pussy Cat Valley, and Babyland. And she has even seemingly inked in the Merryland River! Was she working from memory? If she was actually going through the books why garble the names of the valleys? She also failed to add any detail to Noland or Ix. Perhaps she never read Queen Zixi of Ix? She did add Mo to the map, but has misspelled it "Moe."

There are lots of other bits added to the map, such as Bobo's Castle. Oddly she has added both the Mangaboos AND the Glass City to the Vegetable Kingdom when in fact they are the same place.

One of the things I find most interesting is how she has added in many of her islands to the small section of the Nonestic Ocean that we can see on the map. On the image above it is very gloppy and suffers from bad reproduction. I took a few minutes and cleaned up that section of the map and relabeled the islands:

Yowza! What a crowded little bit of ocean this has become! Obviously Thompson was only imagining Reilly & Lee modifying the existing maps - not expanding them to show enough ocean for the islands to be placed realistically. And of course even this little triangle of ocean wouldn't be QUITE so crowded if the Isle of Phreex were over on the other side of the continent as it should be (near Hiland and Loland) where Thompson tried to re-position it. Oddly she didn't remove it from the clutter-fest above.

Now, of course we can't take the scale and positioning of these islands as utterly sacrosanct - but somehow I find it sort of charming Thompson was jamming in her many, many islands (several books worth!) into this sad little triangle of visible ocean. Note Thompson has also added in Regos and Coregos from Baum's Rinkitink in Oz. She has also taken a chunk of Rinkitink real-estate to form Menankypoo and marked in the Conjurer's Cave. 

As I've mentioned before, I am hoping that this blog series will eventually lead to a new set of Oz maps that accurately reflect the text, while preserving all the detail possible that was provided by the original authors. Thus while Elbow Island can't possibly be that close to Regos and Coregos, when the new Nonestic charts are drawn I hope to utilize Thompson's hand-drawn shape of the island as shown above. Some day . . .

Next time we will begin a several part look at the mapping of the Emerald City! Click here for the next Oz map blog post.

Some Little Known Thompson

Since we launched the Hungry Tiger Press website in 2001 we have featured a free monthly Tiger Tale. For our one hundred and forty-third entry I am pleased to share a previously unknown bit of adult fiction written by Ruth Plumly Thompson.

My partner, Eric, discovered "Gray Youth" in the March 9, 1924, edition of  the Springfield [Massachusetts] Republican. But it also ran in several other newspapers, including the Greensboro [North Carolina] Daily News the same day and the Omaha World Herald on May 4, 1924. The piece is copyrighted by the Chicago Tribune - so that was in all likelihood the source of the syndication, but we have not found the story in that paper thus far.

Click here to read "Gray Youth."

I'm surprised that since she was writing/selling for syndication the story isn't better. It's hardly more than a fragment, and alas, it's rather sexist. Perhaps she sold a longer story and this is all that got published? In any case it remains interesting as a rare bit of Thompson writing for adults. 

To flesh out this blog post I am also sharing a photo of Ruth Plumly Thompson about the time she wrote this story. The photo seems to date from 1925 given that she is holding a copy of The Lost King of Oz. The dog's name was Taffy.

If you like Ruth Plumly Thompson's work you might want to check out her earliest novel for children. The Wish Express  is available from our on-line store. Click here to order

You can read an interesting blog about The Wish Express by clicking here.

Map of Oz Monday - The Ozoplaning Map

Well, dear readers - I am still swamped with chores and such for the Winkie Convention later next month and Comic con which is only a few weeks away - thus blog posting has suffered. But enough of that, let's take a look at the next map!

This map was published as the end-sheets of Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz in 1939. It's interesting as it's the first map giving a sort of "realistic" bird's eye view of Oz. Sadly it's not very detailed. Many elements of Ozoplaning were created to help attract new reader's exposed to the MGM film which was released the same year: the title includes the words "Wizard of Oz," Dorothy and her three best known friends play an important part in the plot; the book begins with a party celebrating the anniversary of Dorothy's first journey to Oz which included a cake featuring a model of her Kansas farmhouse. So I suspect the map of Oz endpapers were also considered a good "introduction" to our favorite literary fairyland.

When I first saw this map it did make me wonder what Oz would look like if it were photographed from a high-altitude. Would the color of the vegetation be apparent enough to delineate borders to a viewer from on-high?  When I have a little time perhaps I'll try to make one in Photoshop. Someday ... someday ...

Map of Oz Monday - Thompson's Map

One of the most intriguing and important maps I'll be talking about is this map from 1938 that was drawn by Ruth Plumly Thompson, the second Royal Historian of Oz and successor to L. Frank Baum.

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This particular map was drawn for Oz fan Henry S. Blossom. It is extremely similar to (and probably a tracing of) an earlier map Thompson created when she was trying to convince Oz book publishers Reilly & Lee to issue revised maps of the Land of Oz that would incorporate her own additions to Ozian geography. For that map Thompson simply inked in her own locales on Reilly & Lee's black and white promotional maps of the Land of Oz and Surrounding Countries. Here she has seemingly traced her master map - and since the two halves don't line up perfectly I suspect she traced it on typing paper.

In general this map speaks for itself. I have scanned the map at a fairly large size so you may explore it in detail. I look forward to reading your comments. There are a few things to point out.

Thompson did provide a compass rose in the margin of the map. It is the traditional style, matching our own east/west orientation. The map shows locales through Handy Mandy in Oz. Note, too, that Thompson added in many of the locations from the later Baum books that had been missing from the previous maps: the Frogman, Reera's house, the Hyups on Mount Munch, the Flatheads, and others as well.

Of Thompson's own additions the only thing that surprises me is that her little countries are drawn somewhat larger than I have usually imagined them. Lake Orizon is a good bit larger than Lake Quad, and Kimbaloo and Pumperdink seem much larger, too. Perhaps Thompson was trying to keep her own additions to Oz geography as large as Baum's were - after all, Oogaboo and the Yips are shown a good deal larger than the Baum texts would indicate.

So, enlarge the map above and go exploring for a few minutes! It's not every day we get to explore a map of Oz that was actually drawn by the Royal Historian herself!

Read Part II of Thompson's Map here!

This map was originally published in the Autumn 1970 issue of THE BAUM BUGLE.

A Wicked Pair of Shoes

No this blog post has nothing to do with Wicked or Ruby Slippers - it has to do with the newest Tiger tale that's been posted on the Hungry Tiger Press website.


The Trial of the Proud and Wicked Pair of Shoes was written by Ruth Plumly Thompson and first published in the Philadelphia Public Ledger December 3, 1916. It's certainly not her best story - but then this isn't my best blog post either. Sometimes people are just too busy. But go read it anyway by clicking here.

And remember that we'll be celebrating Thompson's 121st birthday on Friday of the 2012 Winkie Convention this July. It's not too late to make plans to join us! You can download information and registration materials here.

Spouse and Thompson

One of the comments on this week's Map of Oz Monday blog asked if anyone had noticed that Ruth Plumly Thompson's characters Roger and Pigasus were pictured in the decorative border. To be honest I had forgotten and failed to mention them. When I went to inspect my scan of the map I found a number of Thompson characters in the border design - all from Thompson's 1931 Pirates in Oz. Peter and Clocker, Samuel Salt, Roger, and Pigasus.

There is a mystery character though - a goose named Lonnie wearing a top hat! Anyone have any idea who Lonnie might be? The other oddity on the map border is that Tip appears in it twice!

It's kind of neat to see Walt Spouse's renditions of these Thompson characters. If the Wonderland of Oz strip had run for a decade or so, Spouse would have gotten to Thompson's Oz books. It's interesting that he only included characters from Pirates in Oz (then the most recent book). It would have been nice to see Kabumpo or Sir Hokus on the map, too.

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Map of Oz Monday - Surprise! Surprise!

Well, my friends, in last week's post on the Coloring Contest Map I mentioned that I had never seen a copy of the map that included the "printed instructions" that the publicity articles in The Ozmapolitan describe. Yesterday a reader sent me a scan of the "real" Coloring Contest Map.

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There are several points of interest. In addition to the Oz book prizes for best overall map (showing corrections, additions, coloring, etc.), there are also ten "Consolation Prizes" consisting of boxes of colored Oz stationery for maps that are only colored in neatly. I wonder what this Oz stationery was? Do any sets survive in their boxes?

Another surprise was that the compass-rose is back to its 1914 east-is-left position! This is quite unexpected, considering the 1920 "Giveaway Map" flipped Baum's compass to the traditional directions. The Map of the Surrounding Countries was probably printed on the other side of this map.

This also raises the question of when the maps I showed last week were actually issued. I have seen those maps described as the "Coloring Contest Map" many times - yet now that we know what the "Coloring Contest Map" really looks like, clearly the plain black-and-white map (with no printed directions) is something else. Probably they are the maps issued after the "Coloring Contest" was finished. Yet the 1928 issue of The Ozmapolitan makes no mention of the new maps being prepared. And why after all the fuss of the coloring contest didn't the publishers update the maps in any way other than flipping the compass back to the east-is-right compass?

So that's my little correction for this week. (Click here for the next Oz Map blog post.)

Map of Oz Monday - The Coloring Contest Map

Blogger's Note: A few days after the following blog was written I was sent a scan of the "real" Coloring Contest Map described in the Ozmapolitan articles below. Click here to see the blog discussing the newly discovered map.

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In 1926 Reilly and Lee revived The Ozmapolitan "newspaper" to promote the publication of The Hungry Tiger of Oz. One of the articles announced that the "Royal Surveyor Wants Help on New Maps of Oz." It seems Ozma had requested that new maps be prepared and the article points up some areas of investigation for kids to research and solve. Here's the full article:

I do wonder if there was any genuine confusion at Reilly & Lee that prompted this contest and the two examples of areas to research. The Yoop issue is of course that Mr. Yoop from The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913) is indeed in the Quadling Country - but his wife, Mrs. Yoop, lives in a castle in the Gillikin Country, a castle which is not shown on the map. The issue about the Wicked Witch is interesting. Virtually every Oz reader knows there were TWO wicked witches - one in the Munchkin Country and one in the Winkie Country.

I can only guess that Reilly & Lee were finding themselves hoisted on their own petard because in 1920 they had flipped the Oz compass from Baum's backwards one to a traditional one.

I imagine this caused many a young reader to scratch his head trying to figure out why (after 1920) the Wicked Witch of the West was shown as living in the east. After all, The Wizard of Oz is the book most seriously affected by Reilly & Lee's compass correction. The geography and directions are explicit - down to the very name of the villain.

All that aside, this map contest was a pretty clever ploy to get kids to read the Oz books - and to "research" and correct the 1914/1920 map of Oz.

The maps were issued the following year to promote the Oz series and the new Ozmite Club. The official announcement came in the 1927 issue of The Ozmapolitan promoting the publication of The Gnome King of Oz:

The article above has now added the suggestion that the maps should not only be corrected, but colored in, too. The downside of this contest is that the kids had to mail their maps away. Perhaps this explains the scarcity of the coloring contest maps? Also, they are printed on somewhat brittle uncoated paper. But that prize is pretty good - Oz books specially autographed by Ruth Plumly Thompson! I have not seen any evidence of who the winners were, and the 1928 issue of  The Ozmapolitan doesn't mention the maps or the coloring contest at all.

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The printed coloring contest maps measure 10" x 15". One side features a Map of the Land of Oz and the other shows the Countries Surrounding Oz. Seeing the map in black and white really exaggerates the "stretch" at the center of the map which I described in the blog two weeks ago. It looks like someone has cut a huge firebreak through the Gillikin and Quadling countries. Note, too, that the directions for the coloring contest do not appear on the map - the news articles above stated that they would be there. It's possible only the earliest maps had the directions and once the contest was over the map was reprinted sans directions. But I have yet to see an example with the "printed directions." [Blogger's Note: A reader has sent me a scan of the actual Coloring Contest Map with directions included.  Click here to see it.]

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This is the first time the map of the Countries Surrounding Oz (shown above) has been reprinted since it was included in the first edition of Tik-Tok of Oz in 1914.  Note that Reilly & Lee has corrected the compass points to the traditional (non-Baum) directions. 

Ruth Plumly Thomson kept a great stack of these maps and often sent them to children that wrote her fan letters. Thompson tried in vain for many years to get Reilly & Lee to issue new maps - the very maps that "the Royal Surveyor" was supposed to be working on - maps that would include places from HER Oz books, too. Sadly it never happened. But we will be revisiting these maps and some thoughts Thompson had on them in the coming weeks.

I find it interesting that these maps were issued in 1927, the same year that Dick Martin was born. As we will see in the coming months, Dick Martin's Oz maps from the 1960s thru 1980s have become, for many, the standard reference of Ozian geography.

(Click here for the next Oz Map blog post.)

Map of Oz Monday - the 1920 Map

Last week we explored the Lost Princess of Oz map of 1916 and that brings us to the trouble-maker! This is, of course, the 1920 map printed by the publisher Reilly & Lee and given away with Oz books for the next year or so.

The 1920 Map of the Land of Oz given away by the publishers.

With one huge exception this is the map printed in Tik-Tok of Oz in 1914 - the exception of course is the "correction" of the compass directions to match our "real-world" compass with east on the right and west on the left. On the last three maps we've discussed (all designed by L. Frank Baum) east and west were flipped - the eastern Munchkins on the left hand side of the map and the western Winkies on the right.

I very strongly believe that Baum liked the wonky directions (no idea why!). He created three maps with this "mistake" and had multiple opportunities to correct them, had he wanted to. Oz retained its Baumian directional compass until Baum died in 1919, and then suddenly ZAP! the publisher pulled a switcheroo and reprinted the map as a give-away and they flipped the compass back to normal and the trouble began!

The trouble being that in 1920 Reilly & Lee hired Ruth Plumly Thompson to continue writing the Oz books and they sent her copies of this map. She then proceeded to describe a Land of Oz with the Munchkins in the west and the Winkies in the east!  I certainly don't blame her - the publisher had just hired her to write new Oz books and sent her the "official" map of Oz. A map that sadly no longer reflected Baum's view of his fairyland - so half the Oz series would come to say the Munchkins are in the east and half the series would say the Munchkins were in the west. Not much else to say. This map has caused people to blame Thompson for not paying enough attention to Baum and confused a whole generation of new Oz fans.

The map itself is very well printed on a nice coated paper. There must have been many copies printed and distributed as this map is not particularly rare. Indeed, it is the most common of all the Oz maps printed by Reilly & Lee! The black and white coloring-contest map seldom turns up, nor does the undersized Who's Who in Oz postcard map, and the 1968 Poster maps are rarer still.

One reason so many of these 1920 maps may survive is that, when folded, they fit perfectly inside an Oz book so children could keep them handy. The back of the map is said to show the Oz flag.

The Royal Flag of Oz

I agree it looks like a flag design, but I've never seen any Reilly & Lee publicity stating that it's the Oz flag. I wonder if there was any? I also wonder why the publisher didn't just print the map of surrounding countries on the back.

The Big Stretch

Reilly & Lee introduced one other mistake into this 1920 Oz map - they are using the same plates they used to print it in the 1914 copies of Tik-Tok of Oz. While they went to the trouble to "correct" the compass they did not get rid of the extra 3/8" space at the middle fold of the map. This space was added in 1914 to accommodate the crease at the hinge of the book. Look up at the top image of the map: The Gillikin mountains and lettering are separated by a blank area. There is a similar gap in the forest of the fighting trees in the Quadling Country. And the Emerald City appears as a widened horizontal jewel, not the circular emerald it should be. Here's how the map should appear without the extra 3/8" stretch:

Now, at first it might seem like the lettering and most of the line art are simply stopped in the gap - that the shapes of the actual countries are drawn "correctly." But looking at the 1914 Tik-Tok maps says differently. The book-hinge falls at a different geographical point in the Map of Oz than in the Surrounding Countries. The stretch in the Oz map is as described above - in the Surrounding Countries the stretch runs through the Winkie Country. Here's an image of a flattened out version of the Surrounding Countries map from Tik-Tok.

Notice how much wider the Winkie Country seems. Because of this added 3/8" the Emerald City is not even in the center of Oz anymore and here the city appears round like it should. These 1914 maps only show Oz correctly when they are viewed as endpapers and have that 3/8" space absorbed into the crease at the hinge. This was a really nice touch and showed a great deal of care and foresight in the design of the 1914 maps. Few people would have taken the trouble to adjust the images of two different maps so that they would each appear correctly when glued into the book.

That's about it for this week. I will add one bonus tale though. This copy of the 1920 map was one of the very first "antiquarian" Oz things I ever bought. I had just joined the Oz Club and the first person I contacted via the old Oz Trading Post was James E. Haff, who had offered a good sales list. I bought two things: the 1954 "Popular Edition" of Magical Mimics and this map. I had two months worth of allowance on hand - I was fourteen. So except for my childhood "white editions" this map is the Oz item I've had the longest.

See you next week for the 1921 Parker Brothers gameboard map.
(Click here for the next Oz Map blog post.)

Kabumpo Goes to Moscow

As you have undoubtedly read on this blog, we will be celebrating Ruth Plumly Thompson's birthday at this year's Winkie Convention. It promises to be a grand time and in addition to some great Thompson programming on Friday evening the convention will also feature an elaborate display of Thompson's work. And over the next few months I will try to give you a few sneak previews of some unusual and little known Thompson material.

Today I want to share a quite lovely Russian edition of Thompson's second Oz book Kabumpo in Oz. Only seven of Thompson's Oz books have ever been translated into any language and all seven were published in Russia.

The Russian Kabumpo was published in 2001 by Vrymy. And it is almost certainly the most beautiful and luxurious edition of Kabumpo ever published. Can any of my readers translate the title of the book for me?

The cloth binding is stamped in gold on the front cover and spine and features an undersized version of the original pictorial cover label - slightly reworked to omit the lettering.

The book also features John R. Neill's  original pictorial endpapers  printed in plum-colored ink.

The interior of the book is beautifully designed, too. The handsome new title page can be seen at right and there is a two-page introduction explaining how Thompson acquired the mantle of Royal Historian of Oz and offers a few biographical details..

The volume includes all of Neill's original illustrations which are printed in the same plum-colored ink as the end sheets - as are the running titles. The text of the story is printed in black creating a vibrant contrast.

What makes this Russian edition even more special is the inclusion of all twelve of Neill's color plates.

There are similar editions of The Royal Book of Oz and Captain Salt in Oz - but I chose to show you Kabumpo as we are putting a special Winkie Convention focus on Thompson's Ozzy "Pumperdink" stories.

So come on, stretch your ears and pack your trunk and come join us at the Winkie Convention this summer! Click here or on the WINKIE CON tab at the top of this page for further details.

The Perhappsy Chaps - 4

Sorry for the slight delay,

This should have been up quicker!

But don't refrain, if you have rain,

To wear your nice new slicker!

The latest installment of Ruth Plumly Thompson's The Perhappsy Chaps - ever so wonderfully illustrated by Arthur Henderson.

Please note that if you click on any of the images they will expand to a full-size version which will make it much easier to read! All of the other blog images will similarly enlarge.