Animal Fairy Tales
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 First edition | |
| Author | L. Frank Baum |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Dick Martin |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | International Wizard of Oz Club and Opium Books |
Publication date | 1969 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 151 pp. |
| ISBN | 0-929605-04-7 |
| OCLC | 23200754 |
Animal Fairy Tales is a collection of short stories written by L. Frank Baum, the creator of the Land of Oz series of children's books. The stories (animal tales, comparable to Aesop's Fables or the Just-So Stories and Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling) first received magazine publication in 1905. For several decades in the twentieth century, the collection was a "lost" book by Baum; it resurfaced when the International Wizard of Oz Club published the stories in one volume in 1969.[1]
The nine stories in the collection were printed in consecutive monthly issues of The Delineator (a popular women's magazine of the time) from January to September 1905. The tales were part of the magazine's regular feature, "Stories and Pastimes for Children", and primarily illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull;[2] The Delineator published Baum's story "A Kidnapped Santa Claus" in December 1904 with illustrations by Frederick Richardson, who had begun illustrating Baum's serialized novel Queen Zixi of Ix the previous month in St. Nicholas.
In 1918, as his health declined, Baum focused on preparing manuscripts for future publication in case he died, having favored book publication for his stories. Baum readied three manuscripts, so his publisher (Reilly & Britton) could issue annual Baum books through 1921. Two of those books were the last two in his Oz series (The Magic of Oz and Glinda of Oz), which were published in 1919 and 1920; the third book was Animal Fairy Tales.[3] It is not known why Reilly & Britton did not publish the latter.