History Literature / LandOfOz

* AdaptationalVillainy: Mombi was no doubt a villain in ''Literature/TheMarvelousLandOfOz'' who kidnapped Ozma and changed her gender, and disposed of King Pastoria, but Ruth Plumly Thompson made her into even more of an evil villain. In ''The Lost King of Oz'' she is revealed to have transformed prime Minister Pajuka into a goose, erased Pastoria’s memory, tried to take over Gillikin Country and become the Wicked Witch of the North, and during the book she plots to take over the Emerald City, while throwing Snips the Button Boy down a well (who overheard her plans and was being kept prisoner by her). And in ''The Giant Horse of Oz'', Thompson reveals that she imprisoned the kingdom of the Ozure Islands by unleashing a sea monster to imprison the island. This could be why [[spoiler: Thompson gets Mombi KilledOffForReal]].

* AdaptationalVillainy: Mombi was no doubt a villain in ''Literature/TheMarvelousLandOfOz'' who kidnapped Ozma and changed her gender, and disposed of King Pastoria, but Ruth Plumly Thompson made her into even more of an evil villain. In ''The Lost King of Oz'' she is revealed to have transformed prime Minister Pajuka into a goose, erased Pastoria’s memory, tried to take over Gillikin Country and become the Wicked Witch of the North, and during the book she plots to take over the Emerald City. And in ''The Giant Horse of Oz'', Thompson reveals that she imprisoned the kingdom of the Ozure Islands by unleashing a sea monster to imprison the island. This could be why [[spoiler: Thompson gets Mombi KilledOffForReal]].

* WorldOfPun: There's really no escaping the puns in the Land of Oz. If the characters aren't making them, the narration is, and if the narration isn't, [[Visual Pun the scenery is]]. Weirdly enough, in ''Literature/TheMarvelousLandOfOz'' the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman show a dislike for puns when the Wogggle-Bug tells them, but that book is the only one in which anyone seems to have a problem with puns -- so it's possible that what they realy objected to was the Woggle-Bug's superior attitude.

* IntergenerationalFriendship: Trot and Cap'n Bill

* FlowerInHerHair: Princess Ozma wears big red poppies over both ears like earmuffs. John R. Neill was the first to illustrate her this way, as Baum doesn't mention it in the text.

* LineOfSightName: "Oz" was named after a file cabinet labeled "O-Z".

The book has had 39 official sequels published by Reilly & Lee, with the originals generally being called "The Famous Forty", 13 of the sequels being written by Baum, and 35 books illustrated by John R. Neill. L. Frank Baum wrote the second book only to capitalize on the success of the stage version of ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz''. Reilly & Lee convinced him to write an additional four books, and Baum attempted to end the series after book six, only to be forced to return to the series three years later after some poor theater investments and poor sales on his other fantasy series starring the characters Trot and Cap'n Bill (who were later imported into the Oz books). He wrote a total of 14 books before his death in 1919. With L. Frank Baum's widow Maud Baum's blessing, the series was continued by five different authors (with Ruth Plumly Thompson, the first to continue the series, eventually publishing more Oz books than even Baum). The books came out basically yearly until the output began to slow down in the 1940's, after Thompson left the series and Neill's untimely passing. The last book was published in 1963, 63 years after the first book, with many unauthorised sequels and spinoffs coming afterward once the books began passing into the public domain, including a few by former authors of the Famous Forty, which some fans may consider at least as good as canon, but still unofficial. Here's a list of titles:

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The Oz of the first two books is notably different from the Oz in subsequent books. A lot of this can, and has, been explained and justified by Ozma coming to power and radically changing things.

* TheNeedless: The Sawhorse is a saw horse which Pip brought to life using Old Mombi's life-giving powder. Later Jim the (real) Cab Horse comes to Oz, and tries to convince the Sawhorse that being a meat and bones horse is better than being a wooden horse magically brought to life, but all the examples that Jim gives actually come out in the Sawhorse's favor: for example Jim says that he can bleed and that's good because people can know where he's hurt - the Sawhorse points out that he doesn't get hurt, so he doesn't need to bleed. Jim is the only animal from our world who, having come to Oz where he can talk, begs to go back to the real world where he's just a dumb animal.

* KingIncognito: Ozma's father and Ozma herself

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis: L. Frank Baum is the Royal Historian of Oz. He has never been there himself, but Dorothy tells him her adventures and other tales from Oz. After Oz was cut off from the world, this was done by a combination of wireless telegraph and Glinda's magic.

* ''[[https://childrensbooksonline.org/grampa_in_oz/ Grampa in Oz]]'' (1924)

* ContinuityReboot: When Jack Snow became the new author for the series, he ignored characters and locations introduced in Ruth Plumly Thompson and John R. Neill's books and just wrote a direct sequel to L.Frank Baum's final book. Thompson was reportedly fine with this, as she didn't really want her Oz characters to be used by future authors in the series.

** The majority of ''Rinkitink in Oz'' involves the adventures of Prince Inga and King Rinkitink in another land entirely, until Ozma and company show up at the climax to save the day. (Baum originally wrote it as a standalone fantasy novel ten years earlier, and shoehorned it into an Oz book after public demand.)

* AChildShallLeadThem: Princess Ozma, who's roughly the same age as Dorothy (ten or thereabouts), is the benevolent dictator of what is essentially an empire made of four large countries and a city-state.

** Ozma rules as Princess, although she's really more of an Empress.

* EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses: Princess Ozma, although given the political reality of Oz she might be really an Empress. Ozma is occasionally referred to as a Queen in later books, but it never really sticks. Dorothy herself became a Princess in one of the later books.