Mar 12, 2009 - Sale 2173

Sale 2173 - Lot 41

Price Realized: $ 15,600
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 20,000
(CHILDREN'S LITERATURE.) Thompson, Ruth Plumly. The Wishing Horse of Oz. Original Typescript. The complete work, in 127 typed pages, of Thompson's 15th Oz book. Included is a typewritten title page (chipped) with a number of suggested titles, including the one which was ultimately used. With the author's penciled corrections and additions throughout. This manuscript is augmented with over 100 original pencil drawings by the book's illustrator, john r. neill. He has drawn these over the relevant passages, illustrating the development of his mental images of the characters and their settings. 4to, loose pages, slightly age-toned, but in fine, complete condition; housed in a custom black full morocco clamshell box. Np, 1935
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Additional Details

a rare look into the production of one of the greatest children's series of all time. Eventually published in Chicago by the Reilly and Lee Company in 1935 with illustrations by John R. Neill (the principal illustrator of the Oz books). The first Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, published in 1900, was illustrated by W.W. Denslow. Both Baum and Denslow took credit for the success of the Wizard, and their relationship rapidly deteriorated. As a result, the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, published in 1904, was illustrated by Neill, as were all the rest of the Oz books written by Baum (he died in 1919) and all the Oz books written by Ruth Plumly Thompson, who retired from writing in 1939. Neill then wrote and illustrated three Oz books between 1939 and his death in 1943. Original complete manuscripts of Oz books are quite rare. We know of only one other to have been offered for sale in the last thirty years.