Customer Reviews

Bibliographia Oziana: A concise Bibliographical Checklist of the Oz Books by L. Frank Baum and His Successors

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My copy is an earlier (1988) hardcover, but it appears that the newest (also now out-of-print apparently) edition is just a reprint of that 2nd revised edition. Essential for Ozo-philes, this basically gives the early printing histories of the 40 canonical Oz books - by L. Frank Baum, Ruth Plumly Thompson and several others, from 1900-1963 or so, and brief notes on some of the later editions of these books, and later additions to the world of Oz from other writers. It's useful as an aid to identifying editions, but would be helped by plates that were larger and in color, and I for one would like to see the coverage expanded to include other Oz-related books, those by Baum in particular such as "Queen Zixi of Ix", "The Enchanted Isle of Yew" and "The Magical Monarch of Mo". I'm not really up-to-date on the state of Oz studies today, but I'd imagine this book would still be pretty useful to anyone with even the slightest interest in collecting older editions.

This standard work is essential for any person even slightly interested in collecting or dealing in early Wizard of Oz editions. The books in the Oz series are bibliographically among the most challenging in the known universe. Without this book you are blind. Since the publisher of most of the early Oz books (Reilly Britton / Reilly Lee) essentially NEVER CHANGED the copyright dates, there are many, many holders of reprint Oz books who are absolutely certain they have a first edition. The paperback is usually available from the Intl wizard of Oz club.