The Wizard of Oz and Other Books
By Baum: A Centennial Exhibition
 

IN CELEBRATION of the Centenary of the birth of L. Frank
Baum who created the Oz stories, the Cohmibia University
Libraries have arranged a .special exhibit on the third floor of
Butler Library where ir will be on view until .March 16. But there
is far more than Oz here, for Baum was a prolific writer. We have
tried to bring together for display the complete published works
of our subject, exclusive of his voluminous contributions to maga¬
zines, many of which were later issued in book form. Columbia's
own holdings form the nucleus of the show, but several scarce and
even unique items have been borrowed from other libraries and
private collectors, some far afield.

Baum is undoubtedly best known as the author of the Oz books,
but he also produced a large number of other fairy tales and
stories for older boys and girls. Although his primary contribu¬
tion was to children's literature, there are exhibited here several
novels for adults as well as a number of journalistic ventures (the
first of these an amateur newspaper published when Baum was
only fifteen). There are even two technical books on surprisingly
specialized subjects.

Baum was born near Syracuse, New York, on May 15, 1856,
and here he spent most of his childhood. He later moved to
Aberdeen, South Dakota, then to Chicago, and finally to Holly¬
wood, California, where he died on May 6, 1919. Although he
had done a good deal of previous writing and had produced
several successful children's books, Baum's fame was assured with
the publication of The Wizard of Oz in 1900. The popularity of
the Oz books never waned, and from that time until his death,
Baum wrote a total of fourteen stories about the land of Oz. His
fertile imagination was not exhausted by Oz, however, and in