The most beloved fantasy world ever created for the young (and the young at heart) is just over 100 years old. The world of Oz probably will forever remain the centerpiece of the most enduring fable ever told.

"Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!" (or words to that effect) is a phrase understood by more Americans -- and many people worldwide -- than perhaps any other in the history of popular culture. Is there anyone in America who doesn’t know about Oz?

By the time the Wizard of Oz became a classic film in 1939, L. Frank Baum's creation had been a favorite of children for four decades. With annual showings of the film on television since the 1950s, and literally hundreds of different versions of the Oz legend in print over the past century, little Dorothy and her companions have never lost their popularity.

Oz seems almost real for the millions who have fallen under its spell. Anyone who doubts that should look at 100 Years of Oz: A Century of Classic Images from the Collection of Willard Carroll by John Fricke. Carroll's collection of 10,000 Oz items -- ranging from books to movie posters to sheet music to toys and games and so much more -- forms the basis for this captivating 1999 book. It shows what an amazing impact Baum’s imagination has made on the world.

Dozens of fine illustrators have portrayed Oz over the past century, ranging from W.W. Denslow’s charming drawings for the first edition of Baum's first Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, first published in May 1900, to Eric Shanower's stunningly polished work for The Rundelstone of Oz by Eloise McGraw.

A few book collectors, with passions similar to Oz aficionado supreme Carroll, have built libraries of hundreds of different versions of the Oz books. Other collectors have amassed examples of every' first edition (more than 40 original Oz books in all). Still others have tried to get examples of all the Oz art that has ever been created -- by the likes of John R. Neill, Roy Krenkel, Michael Hague and dozens more.

Only a minority of old children's book titles are bought by every book dealer, providing they are a reasonably decent condition. Nobody turns down an Oz book – if they have the money. Oz books, without question, are the most collected children's book series of all time. A collection of fine first editions with fine dustjackets of the first 36 books -- 14 by Baum, 19 by designated successor Ruth Plumly Thompson and three written by famed illustrator Neil -- would be worth thousands of dollars, particularly since many of the jackets range from uncommon to rare in any collectible condition.

Of course, there have been many offshoots of the original Oz books, including The Wizard of Oz Waddle Book (1934), a unique toy book that allows characters to walk right off the pages. Bud Plant Comic Art offers the limited-edition 1993 Applewood reprint of this rare volume and the toy, originally published as a reprint of the Denslow-illustrated original book. The 1934 edition is one of the Holy Grails for serious Oz collectors and is worth thousands in fine condition.

The tale of Lyman Frank Baum is a classic American success story. Baum experienced many failures and frustrations before he first succeeded beyond his wildest dreams as a children's book author well after the age of 40. Baum tackled several roles in life until finally finding success.

Baum, who was born May 15, 1856, suffered from a congenital heart defect and was often a sickly child. His father, Benjamin Baum, was a wealthy businessman and owned several theaters in the pre-motion picture era when "theater" and "stage" were synonymous. The stage became young Baum's passion as a young adult, and he both acted in and wrote plays. He formed his own theatrical troupe in 1882 to perform his musical play "The Main of Arran," which achieved enough success to play briefly in New York.

That same year, Baum married Maud Gage. The first of their four sons was born in 1883, so  Baum followed his father into the oil business. After Benjamin Baum died in 1887 and business soured for L. Frank Baum, he moved his family to Aberdeen, South Dakota (it was still then the Dakota Territory), to join family members of his wife. Baum failed to make a success of a variety store he called Baum's Bazaar and he went into journalism -- as editor of the short-lived Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer.

When that paper failed, Baum moved his family to Chicago and found work first as a newspaper reporter and then as a salesman. Toward the end of the decade, he used his writing and editing talents to found a trade magazine entitled "Show Window." It showcased Baum's love for commercial window decorating.

He loved telling stories to his children, which inspired him to write his first children's book, Mother Goose in Prose (1897). That book is noteworthy for being illustrated by then-young Maxfield Parrish. Baum soon followed with a privately published book of poetry entitled "By the Candelabra's Glare: Some Verse," which marked his first collaboration with the artist William Wallace Denslow.

Denslow, who was born in the same year as Baum, was a magazine and newspaper illustrator who was working in Chicago at the time Baum began to write books. They met at the Chicago Press Club, to their mutual fortune. Their second collaboration, Father Goose, His Book was reportedly the best-selling children's hook of 1899 and sold more than 100,000 copies, setting the stage for the first Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Before the Rainbow (2000) by Mark Evan Swartz is one of the best books on the origins of Baum's creation of Oz. Swartz relates a charming story of how Baum was inspired to create children's classics:

"As he would later say, 'To please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms ones heart and brings its own reward,' " Swartz wrote. "According to one anecdote, when Baum told his tale (of Oz to his sons and their friends), they asked him the name of the land his characters inhabited. The author looked all around the room in which he was seated, and his eyes fixed upon a filing cabinet whose bottom drawer was labeled 'O-Z.' Another story quotes Baum as telling his publisher about the completed manuscript: 'I was sitting on the hat rack in the hall telling the kids a story, and suddenly this (story) moved right in and took possession. I shooed the children away and grabbed a piece of wrapping paper that was lying on the rack, and began to write. It really seemed to write itself.’ "

Swartz also relates one of the keys to the success of the first Oz book:

"In hindsight, the book's tremendous success comes as no surprise, although the publisher, George M. Hill, was hesitant at first,” he wrote. “Part of the success was due to Denslow's numerous illustrations, including twenty-four full-page multi-color plates. Furthermore, all of the book's illustrations were linked by color to the text, with each region of Oz being represented by a different color, as outlined by Baum. Another unusual design element was the placement of the illustrations on the page. Drawings were found everywhere, sometimes overlapping the text. The effect was humorous and lively."

Baum's own introduction to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz explains what the author was trying to accomplish:

"The old-time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as 'historical' in the children's library,” Baum wrote. “For the time has come for a series of newer 'wonder tales' in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and bloodcurdling incident(s) devised by their authors to point to a fearsome moral to each tale, Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in his wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all the disagreeable incident. Having this thought in mind, the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written solely to pleasure children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares left out.'"

Swartz's conclusion? "What Baum did was to create the first truly American fairyland, using language and imagery that would be familiar to the ordinary American child,” he wrote. “And if he was not totally successful in fully omitting ‘bloodcurdling incident' and 'heartaches' -- after all, one needs at least a small degree of these elements in order to create tension and sustain interest -- the resulting story is full of action, imagination, humor and unusual characters."

Thus began the adventures of Dorothy and Toto as they travel the Yellow Brick Road to meet the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, the Munchkins and, of course, the Wicked Witch of the East among many other characters.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz gave Baum another best-selling book -- but a series of characters destined to far overshadow his significant other body of work for children.

"Perhaps equally important," Swartz contends in Before the Rainbow, "was the fact that adults also were quite taken with it. There is an element of the philosophical in Baum's story, evident, for example, in the theme that Dorothy and her companions already innately possess the qualities or powers they seek. And much of Baum's narrative and its accompanying illustrations work on several levels. Dorothy's adventure is, in fact, a symbolically rich tale open to multiple interpretations, and over the years scholars from a wide variety of disciplines have found different meanings in the story."

The book was adapted for a theatrical musical play in 1902, with that stage play running throughout the decade and achieving so much success that Baum felt impelled to follow up on his Oz saga with several more books -- and with Neill taking over as illustrator. These included The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), Ozma of Oz (1907), Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz (1908), The Road to Oz (1909) and The Emerald City of Oz (1910).

At the end of Emerald City, the sixth book, Baum created a Barrier of Invisibility to Oz, obviously intending to end the series. But the public could not get enough of the Oz books, and that clamor for original Oz stories continued at a level strong enough for Baum to feel forced to jump back in, in much the same way an actor can become typecast in a favorite character despite his ability to play other roles.

From 1913 through 1942, an astounding 30 original Oz books appeared -- not to mention countless reprints of the first six volumes and all the books thereafter. It was a publishing phenomenon unlike anything seen in American history. Not even Baum's death of heart failure in 1919 could stop the series.

In the last six years of his life, Baum produced eight more Oz books for a total of 14 originals, plus several abbreviated smaller versions. The series started again with The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913), followed by Tik-Tok of Oz (1914), Scarecrow of Oz (1915), Rinkitinkin Oz (19l6), Lost Princess of Oz (1917), The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918), The Magic of Oz (1919) and Glinda of Oz (1920). The final two books were published posthumously.

When Baum died, millions of children and adults alike wondered if the series would die with him. Thanks to his widow, Maud, the land of Oz continued to live through the pen of a talented young children's book author, Ruth Plumly Thompson. She was only 20 years old when she penned her first Oz book in 1921, The Royal Book of Oz, which was credited to Baum by the publisher, Reilly & Lee, which took over with the second Baum book.

Thompson's 19 Oz books, all written between 1921 and 1939 in an amazing burst of creativity, are also highly sought by Oz collectors. Her remaining titles include Kabumpo in Oz (1922), Cowardly Lion of Oz (1923), Granda in Oz (1924), Lost King of Oz (1925), Hungry Tiger of Oz (1926), Gnome King of Oz (1927), Giant Horse of Oz (1928), Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz (1929), Yellow Knight of Oz (1930), Pirates in Oz (1931), Ojo in Oz (1933), Speedy in Oz (1934), Wishing Well of Oz (1935), Captain Salt in Oz (1936), Handy Mandy in Oz (1937), Silver Princess of Oz (1938), Ozopolaning with the Wizard of Oz (1939).

Oz was a veritable gold mine, a franchise. Oz was supreme in children's literature. It's no wonder that near the end of the first four decades of Oz books -- and in the year Thompson released her last story -- MGM turned Judy Garland loose as Dorothy to make one of the most beloved movies of all time – “The Wizard of Oz.”

Thompson went to work for the David McKay Company as one of the few female comic-book editors of the 1940's. Neill, the second Oz illustrator, followed her with three successful Oz books -- The Wonder City of Oz (1940), Scalawagons of Oz (1941) and Lucky Bucky in Oz (1942). World War II interfered with Oz, and no new novels were released until Jack Snow took over for The Magical Mimics in Oz (1946) and Shaggy Man of Oz (1949). Eleanor Cosgrove wrote Hidden Valley of Oz in 1951 and Eloise McGraw and Lauren Wagner made their Oz debut with Merry-Go-Round in Oz in 1963, followed by others.

When the characters moved into the public domain in the second half of the 20th century, there was no stopping Oz books. They were printed by the millions.

Besides the stage musical, first performed in 1902, there were short silent films with Oz themes in 1908 and 1910, along with a full-length silent in 1925. But it wasn't until original Oz books had been produced by Baum and Thompson, creating indelible memories for two generations of children, that the 1939 film version of "The Wizard of Oz" became what many people came to feel was the definitive version. Television, of course, enabled virtually everyone in America to share in the feeling, with annual reruns of the movie becoming special household occasions.

"Thanks to television, the Wizard of Oz, that other favorite dream-world fantasy (Little Nemo was the first), keeps coming back at us as an accepted national ritual for viewing each time it is shown," wrote Wiley Lee Umphlen in Mythmakers of the American Dream (1983). "Thereby instilling new generations of devotees with a nostalgic affection for what is probably the film fantasy of fantasies -- the story of a dream within a dream. Like Little Nemo ... Dorothy experiences a dream journey to the Land of Oz and there encounters all the wondrous and nightmarish episodes that dreams are made of.

"As a result, Dorothy's dream is fraught with the inconsistencies and contradictions that comprise all our fantasy wishes and by extension our nostalgic affinities. In fact, the literal meaning of nostalgia is homesickness, and Dorothy's entire dream is directed and controlled by her desire to return home. This desire provides a framework for the story and symbolizes the wish fulfillment or desire in us all to identify with meaningful experience. Consequently, Dorothy's return to the homespun reality of Kansas, as expressed through her relieved awakening, is more than a necessary rounding off of the story and a reminder that 'there's no place like home,' as Dorothy says. It is also a nostalgic reinforcement of a simpler, more innocent way of life common to an earlier, younger America -- a way of life that is no more and therefore more nostalgically entrancing."

Baum was such a skilled storyteller for children that he wrote more than 50 other children's books, some under his own name and many under both male and female pseudonyms. He wrote as Floyd Akers, Laura Bancroft, John Estes Cooke, Captain Hugh Fitzgerald, Susanne Metcalf, Schuyler Staunton, Edith Van Dyne, showing a remarkable ability to write equally well for both boys and girls in an era when stories for youngsters seldom overlapped genders. The Oz books, of course, appealed to everyone.

Any detailed list of first-edition Oz books contains a huge number of notations about the "points" of each true first edition -- the little things that identify true first-state volumes. Over the years, as handsome as they are, many pre-war Oz reprints have been confused for first editions, so both dealers and collectors must consult the experts. This is how complex the situation can be for the collector:

-- Michelle Nolan