Glinda of Oz

Glinda of Oz
	First edition cover
Author	L. Frank Baum (posthumously)
Illustrator	John R. Neill
Language	English
Series	Oz books
Genre	Children's novel
Publisher	Reilly & Lee
Publication date	July 10, 1920
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	279 pp (first edition, hardcover)
Preceded by	The Magic of Oz
Followed by	The Royal Book of Oz
Text	Glinda of Oz at Wikisource

Glinda of Oz is the fourteenth book in the Oz series written by children's author L. Frank Baum, published on July 10, 1920. It is the last book of the original Oz series, which was later continued by other authors. Like most of the Oz books, the plot features a journey through some of the remoter regions of Oz; though in this case the pattern is doubled: Dorothy and Ozma travel to stop a war between the Flatheads and Skeezers, and then Glinda and a cohort of Dorothy's friends set out to rescue them. The book was dedicated to Baum's second son, Robert Stanton Baum. It was followed by The Royal Book of Oz (1921).

Plot

Princess Ozma and Dorothy travel to an obscure corner of the Land of Oz to prevent a war between two local powers, the Skeezers and the Flatheads. The leaders of the two tribes prove obstinate, and they are determined to fight in spite of Ozma and Dorothy. Unable to prevent the war, Dorothy and Ozma find themselves imprisoned on the Skeezers' glass-covered island, which has been magically submerged to the bottom of its lake. Their situation worsens when the warlike queen Coo-ee-oh, who is holding them captive and who alone knows how to raise the island back to the surface of the lake, loses her battle and gets transformed into a swan, forgetting all her magic in the process and leaving the inhabitants of the island, with Ozma and Dorothy, trapped at the bottom of the lake. Ozma and Dorothy summon Glinda, who, with help from several magicians and magical assistants, must find a way to raise the island to the surface of the lake again and liberate its inhabitants.

Original manuscript

The printed text of the book features one significant change from Baum's manuscript. In the manuscript, Red Reera first appears as a skeleton, its bones wired together, with glowing red eyes in the sockets of its skull. The printed text makes Reera the Red first appear as a gray ape in an apron and lace cap — a comical sight rather than a frightening and disturbing specter. The change was most likely made by Baum at the suggestion of his editors. Other changes in the manuscript, made by an unknown editor at Reilly & Lee, are relatively trivial, and it has been suggested that they do not always improve the text.^[1]

The submerged city of the Skeezers in this book may have been suggested to Baum by the semi-submerged Temple of Isis at Philae in Egypt, which the Baums had seen on their trip to Europe and Egypt in the first six months of 1906.^[2]