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List of Oz books

series of children's novels started by L. Frank Baum and continued by others

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ2167095 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Oz books form a book series that begins with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and relates the fictional history of the Land of Oz. Oz was created by author L. Frank Baum, who went on to write fourteen full-length Oz books. Baum styled himself as "the Royal Historian of Oz" in order to emphasize the concept that Oz is an actual place on Earth, full of magic. In his Oz books, Baum created the illusion that characters such as Dorothy and Princess Ozma relayed their adventures in Oz to Baum themselves, by means of a wireless telegraph.

After Baum's death in 1919, publisher Reilly & Lee continued to produce annual Oz books, passing on the role of Royal Historian. Ruth Plumly Thompson took up the task in 1921, and wrote nineteen Oz books. After Thompson, Reilly & Lee published seven more books in the series: three by John R. Neill, two by Jack Snow, one by Rachel Cosgrove Payes, and a final book by Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Lauren Lynn McGraw. The forty books in Reilly & Lee's Oz series are called "the Famous Forty" by fans, and are considered the canonical Oz texts.

Books by L. Frank Baum

Oz books

Story collections and other works

In addition to the canonical Oz books, several of Baum's works that are not Oz stories are nevertheless nominally set in the same fictional universe as the Oz books, and include several character crossovers. These are: Dot and Tot of Merryland (1901), The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902), The Magical Monarch of Mo (1903), The Enchanted Island of Yew (1903), Queen Zixi of Ix (1905), John Dough and the Cherub (1906), The Sea Fairies (1911) and Sky Island (1912).

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “List of Oz books” as series of children's novels started by L. Frank Baum and continued by others. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1900, 1919, 1921, 1901—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where List, books and series can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as series of children's novels started by L. Frank Baum and continued by others. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2167095. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1919, 1921 and 1901.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “List of Oz books” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.