The Visitors From Oz

"The Visitors From Oz" sprang from a chance discovery by Baum Scholar and collector, Dick Martin. While searching old newspaper files at the Chicago library during the early 1950's, Martin hapened upon a full page color comic dating back to 1904 entitled "Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz". Each weekly episode offered a new short adventure of the Oz characters in America written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by Walt McDougall.

Intrigued, Martin had photostats made of as many of the comics as he couldfind, witht he htought that these lost Oz stories might be collected in book form. It was not until 1957 that a dummy book was assembled and illustrated using Dick Martin's idea, how ever at the time, The Reilly and Lee Company, Baum's old publisher was appreciative of his idea but was not interested. But by 1959 when the Henry Regenry Company purchased Reilly& Lee, the idea took off to promote Oz to a whole generation of readers.

Jean Kellog, Reilly & Lee's chief editor, rewrote the stories to reflect modern tastes while AMrtin provided the illustrations and design for the book. Information stated here is from "The Book Collector's Guideto L. Frank Baum" by Paul Bienvenue which my borhter just bought me and I will be discussing in another post.

Now unto the book I have in my collection.....

The Visitors from Oz was adapted by Jean Kellog who is uncredited, printed in Chicago by the Reilly & Lee Company in 1960 and illustrated by Dick Martin. The book measures 11 1/4 x 8 5/8 and is 95 pages long. This book originally sold for $3.95 while I bought it at $25.00. The book is considered a First edition Binding C book meaning:

• Bright green, red, blue or yellow buckram cloth cover (coarser texure)
• Front Cover illustration printed in white and dark blue only.
• Spine letteringprinted in dark blue against white.
• Back Cover is blank, save for the imprint of the binder (American Publisher's Company), printed vertically in white near the hinge.
• ndpapers-Front and back are blank--can be ilustrated as well printed in black