The Marvelous Land of Oz, Chapters Twenty-Two to Twenty-Four

In which Mombi is discovered and there is an exciting chase, after which Mombi reveals the secret of Princess Ozma's disappearance, and all is brought to a happy ending; and in which our narrator expostulates at length about the feminist implications and interpretations of the book.



Last installment, and boy have we got some surprises in store for you! Well, one surprise. Maybe.

More after the jump!

The Marvelous Land of Oz, Chapters Nineteen to Twenty-One

In which our heroes manage to escape the jackdaws, restore their ride through mathematical trickery, beg help of Glinda the Good, and begin an attempt to find the rightful ruler of Oz.


All right folks, we've got only one more installment after this one, so we're circling in to the finale!

So jackdaws, mentioned in the last installment but more fully experienced here, are small members of the crow family that generally have black feathers over most of their bodies, with gray on the back of their necks, and light gray eyes (with some differences among the four known subspecies.) They're known for being very vocal -- they can even learn to speak a few words -- and are (as shown in these chapters) known to collect and hoard small items, like their relative the magpie. They mate monogamously and for life, but do live in hierarchical social groups that have been known to make large nesting platforms, as seen here. Of course, real jackdaws probably wouldn't be able to steal things like handsaws and bicycle pumps, as pictured in one of the last chapter's illustrations, but these birds have at least some resemblance to their real-world counterparts.

Oh, and a group of jackdaws is called "a clattering," or sometimes "a train."

One does wonder why the (brief) long faces over the fate of the Scarecrow. I mean, he's been unstuffed a whole bunch of times! I even had to create the "troubling existential questions" tag for him! Even if they didn't have the convenient pile of money to stuff him with, surely they could have just bundled up his clothes and head and stuffed him when they got back to Oz, right?

Okay, so we get back to Oz here. Now, let's get geographically nerdy! It's assumed that when they overshot the Oz border they ended up in Dorothy's "outside world" -- i.e., our world. We meet a clattering of jackdaws, which live throughout Europe and western Asia, and a couple of spots in northern Africa. Now, to get back to Oz from there, they cross over the great sandy desert that separates Oz from the rest of the world, without crossing over any water or anything. So, we're talking about Oz existing within some sandy desert in Europe or western Asia. It would probably be easiest to say that it's in the Gobi Desert because of its size (magic, of course, protects Oz from the extreme temperature variation of the region.) However, the jackdaws have stashed away a whole bunch of money clearly identified as "dollars" -- though how an Oz-born kid knows what a "dollar" is is another matter -- which of course implies we're somewhere in the US, nowhere near where any jackdaws live. And of course, a tornado and a balloon would have a heck of a way to go to bring people form the American Midwest to central Asia like that. So where were they, really? THIS MAKES NO SENSE, BAUM.

(Though of course, it's probable that they were just mistaken about being in the outside world, and were simply in another part of Nonestica.)

Both General Jinjur's Army of Revolt and Glinda's all-girl army are a little more evidence of Baum writing this book for the stage, as even book reviews of the time noted that they were clearly intended to showcase large groups of chorus girls. Whatever, they're still badass.

Though... this here would be Glinda's officer in charge of fudge? Is that right? I mean, I know you want an army to be well-supplied, and I personally would want fudge before going into battle, but... what?

Okay, Jack, you're... you're being rather terrifying here. Please get out of Jellia's personal space.

Okay, only one more installment to go! Will they find out what happened to the Princess Ozma? Will Jinjur be deposed? Will Jack's head spoil? Find out next time!


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg with no pictures, and a fully illustrated facsimile of the first edition can be found at Open Library. No reading ahead, though!

The Marvelous Land of Oz, Chapters One to Three

In which a young boy makes a pumpkin-headed man to scare his wicked guardian and is surprised what she does with him, following which he runs away to escape her somewhat harsh punishment; and in which our narrator goes on at rather extreme length before we even get to the story.



The Marvelous Land of Oz was published in 1904, four years after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and two years after Baum's highly successful stage version of the latter. As such, there are definitely elements of this book that seem to be written with an eye towards the stage. The book is notable among Baum's fourteen original Oz books as one of the few to have a male protagonist, and the only one not to feature Dorothy at all.

This book is also notable for bringing on board a new illustrator. Apparently, Baum and W. W. Denslow, the illustrator of the original, argued over royalties to that 1902 stage version. Denslow had designed the sets and costumes and was co-holder of the copyright of the book, and thus thought he deserved an equal share with Baum and the music composer. Baum disagreed and decided not to work with him again. Don't feel too bad for Denslow, though. The royalties he did receive from the book and the musical were enough for him to purchase an island in Bermuda and declare himself King Denslow I. (Though it seems he sold it again by 1908. So much for the dynasty.)

Thus, instead of Denslow, this book is illustrated by John R. Neill, who would go on to illustrate more than forty different Oz books, including all of the rest of the "Famous Forty" canonical Oz books, minus four that came out after his death in 1943 but including three that he wrote himself. Neill's style rather obviously became the "definitive" style that at least influenced all other Oz illustrators who followed, if they didn't mimic him outright.

Now, while Denslow's illustrations were all in color (even if it was usually only one or two colors), Neill's illustrations here are mostly line drawings, with sixteen full-color plates throughout. The quantity of illustrations, though, remains quite large. AS such, much with the last book, I won't be time-tagging them, as they come a little too thick and fast.

The color plates here come from Old Book Art, the full-page black and white illustrations come from the facsimile of the first edition at OpenLibrary.org, and the remaining line drawings are all from Classics Illustrated (but no, not that Classics Illustrated.) And since this is the first installment, I've included the preliminary illustrations:

Above is the copyright page, showing play posters being pasted up, presumably as a nod to the stage version.

See more after the jump!

"The Little Mermaid," by Hans Christian Andersen

In which the young mermaid from under the sea wishes to be part of our world, makes a bargain with a sea witch, and attempts to win the love of a young prince in order to... get an immortal soul, a part of the story that our narrator had rather forgotten about.



Since "Snow White and Rose Red" was a bit on the short side, we're going to double up on our short story interlude by returning to Mr. Hans Christian Andersen. "The Little Mermaid," one of Andersen's popular "suffering is totally good for you" stories, was originally published in Denmark in 1836 as "Den lille havfrue," which literally translates as... "The Little Mermaid." As with "The Snow Queen" I had to pick a translation. Now, rather than just go with the one in the Andersen collection I own, because it inexplicably doesn't include "The Little Mermaid," which, what? I went with the original English translation from 1872, by H.P. Paull. As with Alice "Mrs. Edgar" Lucas," this is alternatively credited to H.B. Paull, Mrs. H.B. Paull, Mrs. H.H.B. Paull or various combinations thereof, when it seems her name is, in fact, Susannah Mary Paull.

Also, I, um, may have gone a bit overboard with the illustrations on this one. I found one rather extensive set of illustrations I really liked by Helen Stratton from 1899. Those are most of them, and all but one of the black-and-white illustrations. The full-color illustrations are by our friend Edmund Dulac, from the same 1911 edition that our "Snow Queen" illustrations came from. Then there are two others I threw in from Harry Clarke, 1916, and Hans Tegner, largely because I thought the others didn't include nearly enough pictures of the sea witch, who is awesome.

Oh, and it should be noted that whilst the Victorian era was one of rather notorious prudery, they were still kind of okay with breasts in art and illustrations. So... mermaid boobs ahead, if that kind of thing bothers you.

By the way, I apologize that this is late and that I didn't put in any timestamps for the images, but I need to stop pretending I can get these things done on time during tech week for a show I'm in. The theater people in the audience know what I'm sayin'. If I get a chance, I'll add the timestamps in.

The "F" from the opening line: "Far out in the ocean..." (Stratton)

More illustrations after the jump!

"Snow White and Rose Red," by the Brothers Grimm

In which the titular sisters encounter a very nice bear and a very ungrateful dwarf and between them find a happy-ever-after; and in which the narrator insists on demonstrating that he learned SOMETHING in four years of high school German.



And here's our first fairy tale by Grimm! As described at length in the recording, this Snow White is not the same as that of "...and the Seven Dwarves." The names are different in German: Sneewittchen for the more famous one, and Scnheeweißchen* for this one. They both translate literally to "Little Snow White," but the former is Low German and the latter is High German. There is a dwarf in this one, though!

Much like with Andersen and Verne, there are a multitude of translations of Grimm both in and out of the public domain. A translation by Margaret Hunt from the 1870s is considered the definitive English translation of the nineteenth century. It also, however, has not aged especially well. Instead, I'll be using the version used in the Barnes & Noble Classics edition I got for free a while back, which is an anonymous translation from 1869. Maybe not the best, but definitely usable.

I was, though, very pleased with the number of illustrations I was able to find for this somewhat lesser-known tale. I couldn't entirely decide between three sources, so I used them all! One batch is by Jennie Harbour, from a 1921 compilation edited by Edric Vredenburg called My Book of Fairy Tales. Another is by L. Leslie Brooke, from a 1909 book called The House in the Wood and Other Fairy Stories, and the third is by Alexander Zick from a German edition of Grimm's from sometime in the 1880s, probably. Most of the image files are courtesy of SurLaLune Fairy Tales.

2:37 - They were like the flowers which bloomed on two
rose-bushes which grew before the cottage. (Jennie Harbour)

See more illustrations after the jump!