Oz in the Public Domain

Contents: About the Collection | About the About Page | Tech

About the Collection

This collection contains all texts in the Oz series’ famous forty, often considered the canon Oz books, that have fallen into the public domain and are free to use by anyone for any purpose. The goal behind this collection is to collect all of these texts in one place for use by writers, scholars and readers alike. The use of a large number of subjects allows tracking of what characters and locations within the universe of Oz entered the public domain when, and allows easy tracking of who and what appears in each novel.

A Note Regarding the Content of Some of the Texts Collected

The works collected here were all originally published between the years 1900 and 1949. As such, some of them contain ethnic and racial stereotypes that were common in American society at the time of publication. This is not to excuse these elements, but to ensure that the users of this collection are aware of the harmful depictions contained in a few of the texts.

About the Oz Series and the Famous Forty

The Oz books initially by the author L. Frank Baum are touchstones of childrens literature which chronical the fictional happenings of the mythical Land of Oz. The first entry ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ is the most well known and most frequently adapted. In part, this is because of it’s long history of beloved adaptations such as the 1939 film ‘The Wizard of Oz’. The other major factor is the availability of the material. L Frank Baum’s first book in the series entered the public domain in 1956 and for nearly 70 years has been free to adapt or take pieces from to be used in all sorts of media, from television shows such as Supernatural, to video games such as the recent Lies of P.

There are forty books considered canon by many fans of the series known as the famous forty. 14 of these were written by L. Frank Baum before his death in 1919, with more written by authors including Ruth Plumly Thompson, John R. Neill, Jack Snow, Rachel R.C. Payes, and Eloise Jarvis McGraw with assistance from Lauren Lynn McGraw. Of the forty, twenty-nine have entered the public domain as of 2024, with another, Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, set to enter the public domain as of January 1, 2025. While the first novel is unquestionably the most popular to take from for other media, the other novels offer much to those who wish to delve further than the typical adaptation.

Thanks & Updates

Special thanks to the Internet Archive & Project Gutenburg for orignally hosting these texts to be used free of charge, all items have links to their original host, where they can often be read in an even high quality.

This project is planned to be updated as further texts enter the public domain.