09 February 2012

No wonder people got lost in Oz


From an article at The Awl about maps of fictional places in children's literature:
All told, Baum drew forty individual maps of Oz to accompany his novel. This is the major one, though, showing the entirety of the land and its surrounding areas. The Emerald City, in the center, is surrounded by four distinct countries. The countries are bordered by deserts... One thing to note, though: the compass is reversed, East and West are switched. This is an L. Frank Baum original error! The first copy of this map was on a glass slide, when Baum went to make a paper copy he traced it backwards.
It took me a long time to find the compass, but it is there (in the right upper corner).

2 comments:

  1. Baum was much more prolific than his surviving work suggests, although there are newly illustrated editions out there now. I wonder how much he wandered into these lads in his many sequels. I may just have to have a closer look.

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  2. And Baum switches East & West in the books, too! I picked up an old copy of Ozma of Oz a while ago and could not figure out what was going on. Now I know.

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