According to the Oz books, it is a hidden fairyland cut off from the rest of the world by the Deadly Desert. There are now over 50 novels based upon Baum's original Oz saga.īaum characterized Oz as a real place, unlike MGM's 1939 musical movie adaptation, which presents it as a dream of lead character Dorothy Gale. Neill (who had previously collaborated with Baum on his Oz books) and several other writers and artists continued the series. After his death in 1919, author Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrator John R. In all, Baum wrote fourteen best-selling children's books about Oz and its enchanted inhabitants, as well as a spin-off series of six early readers.

Baum intended to end the series with the sixth Oz book The Emerald City of Oz (1910), in which Oz is forever sealed off and made invisible to the outside world, but this did not sit well with fans, and he quickly abandoned the idea, writing eight more successful Oz books, and even naming himself the 'Royal Historian of Oz.' For the next two decades, he described and expanded upon the land in the Oz Books, a series which introduced many fictional characters and creatures. Due to Oz's worldwide success, Baum decided to return to it four years after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published. According to The Marvelous Land of Oz, this monarch is Princess Ozma.īaum did not intend for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to have any sequels, but it achieved greater popularity than any of the other fairylands he created, including the land of Merryland in Baum's children's novel Dot and Tot in Merryland, written a year later. Each province has its own ruler, but the realm itself has always been ruled by a single monarch. Oz consists of four vast quadrants, the Gillikin Country in the north, Quadling Country in the south, Munchkin Country in the east, and Winkie Country in the west. The Land of Oz is a magical country introduced in the 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written by L. Emerald City (capital), Munchkin Country, Gillikin Country, Quadling Country, Winkie Country, Yellow brick road, Deadly Desertĭorothy Gale, Toto, Wicked Witch of the East, Good Witch of the North, Wizard of Oz, Princess Ozma, Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion, Glinda the Good Witch, Wicked Witch of the West

The marvellous land of oz