Beschreibung:

Pictures from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Chicago: George W. Ogilvie & Co., [1902]. By Thomas A. Russell. 43 pp. 8vo (210 x 165 mm). Publisher’s cloth-backed color lithographed pictorial wrappers. Condition : covers slightly faded with a few creases and minor soiling, light shelf wear to extremities, a few pages offset. Provenance : Fred M. Meyer Collection. first and only printing of rare pamphlet printed on original color plates for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . When the George M. Hill Co., the original publisher of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), went bankrupt in early 1902, George W. Ogilvie purchased the firm’s stock that included unused color plates for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Baum and Denslow sued to have the printing plates to all of their books returned to them as they were negotiating with The Bobbs-Merrill Co. of Indianapolis to reissue their joint publications. They had every right to as they had paid to have them made. Pictures from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a shameless attempt to cash in on the recent smash hit musical extravaganza The Wizard of Oz . The color lithographed covers were based on publicity photographs of Fred Stone and Dave Montgomery as the Scarecrow and the Tin Man in the play. Because Ogilvie did not possess the book’s actual printing plates, he merely commissioned a new story from hack writer Russell and printed it on the versos of Denslow’s original color plates. This largely incomprehensible “Story telling the Adventures of the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Little Girl” bears almost no resemblance to Baum’s American fairy tale. It mentions neither the name “Dorothy” or the word “Oz.” Unfortunately, two of the plates (the pictorial title page and the picture of Glinda the Good) were used as endpapers and pasted to the backs of the wrappers. Although Denslow’s name appears on both the cover and title page of this pamphlet, he does not seem to have approved of or been personally involved in any way with its production.