The International Wizard of Oz Club

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The International Wizard of Oz Club, Inc., was founded in 1957 by Justin G. Schiller, then a thirteen-year-old. The fourteen charter members, some of whom continue to make valuable contributions to the club, were garnered from the mailing list found among the papers of the recently deceased Jack Snow, with whom Schiller and the others had discussed the work of L. Frank Baum.

The organization today has hundreds of members from all over the world, from children learning to read with the Oz books to adults who were around when the books were still being published annually, from ardent Baum purists to those primarily interested in the MGM movie.

The club's major publication, The Baum Bugle, began with Schiller duplicating issues on his parents' mimeograph machine. It is now published three times a year and has been recognized as a scholarly journal by the Modern Language Association since 1983. It has reached 144 issues as of Winter 2005, and its issues have doubled in size within the past ten years.

Oz Club members typically organize three major conventions a year in the United States (Munchkin (east), Winkie (west), and Ozmopolitan (central). There are also smaller gatherings, most frequently South Winkie (known briefly as "Yips" but rejected after one convention under that name), Quadling, and Gillikin or Ozcanabans. The last group met in the banquet hall of a restaurant in Escanaba, Michigan, home of Fred M. Meyer, a founding member who served for decades as the club's secretary. Meyer also mailed out an annual Christmas card to all members each year, often with ideas for new Oz books, until his health put him at emeritus status that lasted to the end of his life.

Notable members of the club past and present have included Ray Bradbury, Martha Coolidge, Rachel Cosgrove Payes, Margaret Hamilton, Michael Patrick Hearn, Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Bronson Pinchot (who organized conventions in the 1970s), Edward Wagenknecht, and Meinhardt Raabe. Frank Joslyn Baum was appointed the club's first president.

The club has published many of Baum's rarer books, including Animal Fairy Tales, Aunt Jane's Nieces, and Twinkle and Chubbins. It published two Oz books by Ruth Plumly Thompson and one each by Rachel Cosgrove and the team of Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Lauren Lynn McGraw. In 2000, it put out its first new Oz book not linked to the original series: Gina Wickwar's The Hidden Prince of Oz, with illustrations by Anna-Maria Cool.