Featured The Land of Oz, 1939. Help please !!

Hi everyone, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all. I have a couple questions on this book " The Land of Oz A sequel to The Wizard of Oz" . This book says copyright 1904 but is dated 1939. Hardcover is blue, i have seen some that are red. This edition says A Sequel to the Wizard of Oz, some do not. Can someone explain the different versions of this book? Thanks in advance.

 

The Marvelous Land of Oz, the sequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was published in 1904. Yours is a later edition published in 1939 (which is the same year the movie The Wizard of Oz film released.) Between the original publication date and your reprint, it appears that the publishers tweaked both the title and the cover. Yours appears to be a copy in very good condition. As a 1939 reprint, its value would be much different than that of the original 1904 edition.

Debora

 

Hi,
The copyright expired in 1921. After this date anyone could run off a copy and lots of publishing companies did.
greg

 

This provides information about your book's publisher Reilly & Lee and its association with the Oz books.

https://www.rareozbooks.com/published.html

Debora

 

Thank You Debora

 

Thanks Greg, pretty confusing with all the different editions and dates.

 

It is confusing. Something that happens with classics as, by definition, they're never out of print so there will be many, many editions.

Debora

 

interesting article about expiring copyrights............ https://www.npr.org/2018/12/26/6802...merican-works-will-re-enter-the-public-domain

 

Um, no.

2MB's partner here, a bookseller. Earliest copyright protection in the US, from 1790 on, provided 14 years' protection, which could be renewed if the author was still alive, for another 14. In 1904, the Copyright Act of 1831 was in effect, so Baum and his publishers would have had 28 years, renewable for another 14 after that. The copyright Act of 1909 extended the renewal term to 28 years, too; and subsequent acts have expanded the period of protection, though by now all authorized publications prior to 1923 are in the public domain and freely reproducable.

Publishers COULD, however, authorize reprints, and publishing companies did change hands and partnerships, so you'll see Oz titles before 1917 published by Reilly & Britton, after 1917 by Reilly & Lee. Bobbs-Merrill held the right to the original Wizard of Oz, but not the sequels, and authorized reprints by Dononue.

It IS all quite confusing, and there are many states of most titles, with different numbers of color plates, if any, different cover art, and few of them with any indication of the actual printing date. The essential bibliography, with detailed descriptions of all known versions and approximate dates, is Bibliographia Oziana, by Hanff & Greene, et al., now conveniently available in a reprint from Oak Knoll - you used to have to be a member of the Oz club to get copies.