The Tin Woodman of Oz

The Tin Woodman of Oz is the twelfth Land of Oz book written by L. Frank Baum and was originally published on May 13, 1918. The Tin Woodman is reunited with his Munchkin sweetheart Nimmie Amee from the days when he was flesh and blood. This is a back-story from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The book is dedicated to the author's grandson Frank Alden Baum.

     The Tin Woodman of Oz provides backstory for Oz itself; it was not always a fairyland and became one by being enchanted by the Fairy Queen Lurline, who left a fairy behind to rule it. In Glinda of Oz Ozma says that she herself was that fairy, though in The Marvelous Land of Oz we are told of her restoration to a throne long held by her ancestors. In any event this novel marks a clear maturation of Ozma's character, now said to appear significantly older than Dorothy (in Ozma of Oz they appeared the same age) and a fairy working her own innate magic.

     Baum's Oz books had entered a trend of declining sales after 1910. The Tin Woodman of Oz reversed this trend; its first-year sales of 18,600 copies were enough to make it a “best-selling success.” Significantly, the sales of earlier Oz titles also rebounded from previous declines, many selling 3,000 copies that year, and two, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) and the previous year's The Lost Princess of Oz (1917), selling 4,000 copies. Even Baum's non-Oz-related early works were affected by the upsurge.

     The reason for this reversal of fortune is harder to specify. The psychological shock of the trench-warfare carnage of World War I may have inspired a wave of nostalgia for a simpler time with Baum's books representing a lost “age of innocence.”

    A new edition of the book was illustrated by Dale Ulrey in 1955. She illustrated a new edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for Reilly & Lee the following year, but sales did not warrant her continuing to provide new illustrations.