WW: What are some of the Baum series books that you wished he had continued?

WW: What is your rarest treasure?

PB: Tough call! I have an original pen-and-ink illustration by Frederick Richardson from Queen Zixi of Ix. Beyond the obvious fact that any original artwork is “one-of-a-kind,” I’m not aware of any other illustrations having survived from Zixi.

I also have a salesman’s sample copy of the second edition of The New Wizard of Oz from ca. 1905-10 that has a brilliant cloth cover, pictorial illustrated endpapers, and 260 completely blank pages. On the rear fixed endpaper are the cloth spines for four other Baum books issued by Bobbs-Merrill: The Magical Monarch of Mo, The Enchanted Island of Yew, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, and Dot and Tot of Merryland.

WW: What is the one item you would most like to add to your collection?

PB: Beyond some one-of-a-kind pieces in private and institutional collections which could not be obtained without a shameful amount of skullduggery, I’d have to say a copy of The Book of the Hamburgs (1886), the compilation of articles originally published in The Poultry World magazine in 1882 and technically Baum’s first “book.” I know of just seven surviving copies, and only two of these are in private collections. Or perhaps the first printing copy of The Marvelous Land of Oz, in dust jacket and inscribed by Baum to his sister Mary Louise Brewster, that was part of rare book dealer Howard Mott’s catalog of wonders from Jack Snow’s personal collection (ca. 1950). That copy seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth, so conceivably it could show up here at a neighborhood garage sale. Barring either of those, I’d love a copy of The Sea Fairies in Binding A and dust jacket; to date, no such copies have ever been observed.   Bloomsbury held an auction recently that included Neill’s original artwork for one of the color plates from The Sea Fairies. I already deeply regret that I was unable to buy it.

PB: It can certainly be argued (and has been), that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is not Baum’s finest work. Critics have cited Queen Zixi of Ix as his most polished fairy tale, and at the end of his life Baum himself viewed Sky Island and The Scarecrow of Oz as his personal favorites and the books he expected to be remembered by. (By that time, however, Baum had ceded his rights to The Wonderful Wizard in bankruptcy and his tendency to dismiss it as a “novelty” may be due at least partly to bitterness.) But over a century later it is clear that, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum created an imaginary world with the power and resonance of Greek mythology. In terms of impact there is little like it in the history of children’s literature.

I must confess to not having read all of Baum’s pseudonymous works! But in terms of his contributions to children’s “literature,” the consensus that The Woggle-Bug Book (1905) is his weakest effort is probably spot-on. As an adult, I would argue that Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908) is an endlessly grim story full of conflict from beginning to end, but as a child reader I saw it as a thrilling adventure. Of his best-known books, perhaps Tik-Tok of Oz (1914) deserves special mention in that the story is essentially a blatant rehash of Ozma of Oz (1907) with a good dollop of The Road to Oz (1909) thrown in for flavor.

WW: How many years has it taken you to compile the information for "The Book Collector's Guide to L. Frank Baum and Oz"?

PB: I began the project early in 2002, and although the bulk of the writing was done by the end of 2004, I continued to add new information and photographs until the moment the manuscript left for the printer in the fall of 2008. And there have been some new discoveries since then that I hope to work into a second printing of the Guide.

WW: Why do you think the Oz books were dismissed by librarians and (for the most part) have gone out of print over the years?
 

PB:

WW: How groundbreaking do you consider The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to be in children's literature?  Why?

WW: What do you think of the 1939 film?

WW: It seems that more Oz books and original artwork are becoming available at auction lately.  How do you decide what to buy for yourself or resale?  Do you have a personal limit on how much you're willing to pay for something, or do you get the bidder's frenzy?

PB: When it comes to Oz I am a collector first and a dealer second, although being a dealer provides me with an excellent rationalization for upgrading. My resources are definitely limited, so I am always very conscious of cost and set firm limits prior to any auction. For me, one of the greatest aspects of Internet bidding is the ability to submit a bid in advance of the auction date and then just walk away. If I win the item at my price, terrific; if not, I haven’t been working myself into a lather waiting for the hammer to fall.

WW: As a book dealer, how has the internet affected your business?

PB: The Internet IS my business. The vast amount and diversity of material offered on eBay and book sites like Abebooks.com allows me to target what I wish to buy and sell in ways that would have been very difficult prior to the Internet age. It also takes a great deal of guesswork out of pricing, since it is easy to see what the competition is charging for a given book. Many old-time dealers bemoan this new transparency, but I think it is of great benefit to both buyers and sellers. The only ones who are really adversely affected are those who once profited from arbitrarily high pricing.

WW: "The Book Collector's Guide to L. Frank Baum and Oz" is amazingly thorough.  Tell us about your research, and the various book collections you traveled to catalogue.

PB: I saw a need for a reference that covered all of Baum’s book-length output, not just Oz, and with a special emphasis on ease-of-use. As a collector, I have always been drawn to auction and dealer catalogs, such as Schiller/Swann (1978) or Peggy Christian #11 (ca. 1970). The best of these provide basic bibliographic information without overwhelming detail, but also include capsule descriptions that feature interesting tidbits about the histories of the books themselves. I always viewed the project as a cross between Hanff & Greene’s Bibliographia Oziana (1976/1988) and Greene’s & Martin The Oz Scrapbook (1977). I wanted to produce a useful tool that was also “browsable” and entertaining.

The collectors I encountered were incredibly gracious, and with my collaborator Bob Schmidt I was fortunate to be granted unlimited access to some of the finest private collections in the country. I spent literally weeks examining just two of these. Some collectors preferred anonymity while others didn’t mind receiving credit, but I became uncomfortable with the idea of pinpointing the locations of so many treasures and ultimately decided to keep the collections unnamed. Though I was constrained by logistics from visiting every available collection, those I did examine provided opportunities to photograph essentially every piece I sought, with a single exception (the dust jacket to the first printing of The Marvelous Land of Oz as mentioned above). We found interesting variants in even the most modest of “serious” collections, and there are still some east coast collections that I look forward to visiting in the future.

When he first thought of going into the used book business, several dealers he knew said he'd have to be "crazy as a march hare." He lives with his beautiful wife, Catherine and their new son, Robert Louis in Southern California.

You may contact Paul at info@marchharebooks.com
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