35. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Baum’s version went like this: one day, he was telling stories to a group of children about a magical land, a lion, a scarecrow and a tin woodman. One of the children asked what the land was called. Searching for an answer, Baum noticed a filing cabinet next to him which had a drawer marked O-Z, and replied ‘Oz’. The moment of inspiration led not only to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but to numberless spin-offs, including The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, The Road to Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, The Patchwork Girl Of Oz, Little Wizard Stories of Oz, Tik-Tok of Oz, The Scarecrow Of Oz, Rinkitink In Oz, The Lost Princess Of Oz, The Tin Woodman Of Oz and The Magic of Oz. And let's not forget Zardoz, with Sean Connery.

The provenance of this account – i.e. of the magical meeting of storyteller and filing cabinet – is fairly good: Baum even gave it an exact date, May 7 1898, since he remembered that a newspaper in the room carried the story of the US Navy’s victory over the Spanish in Manila. But the story only emerged in 1903, three years after the book’s publication, in a press release by Baum’s publisher, Bobbs-Merrill. Moreover Baum was a notorious fabulist – both in life and in fiction – and two of his other books were The Magical Monarch of Mo and Queen Zixi of Ix. Filing cabinets of the specifications M–O and I–X seem rather less likely.

Consulted:
Rogers, KM: L. Frank Baum, Creator of Oz (2002)

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