# Is "The Marvelous Land of Oz" by L. Frank Baum (illus. John R. Neill) a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum (illus. John R. Neill) (Reilly & Britton, 1904) is identified by: The title page must read "The Marvelous Land of Oz" over the Reilly & Britton, Chicago imprint. US-only origination, and the census claim is correct: Reilly & Britton, Chicago, 1904 is the true first, with no UK or other-language edition preceding it.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The title page must read "The Marvelous Land of Oz" over the Reilly & Britton, Chicago imprint
- The first state has a copyright page carrying no month; the second state adds the line "Published, July, 1904"
- Collate for 16 tipped-in colour plates by John R. Neill, each with a typeset caption
- Binding is red cloth with the front cover pictorially stamped and the title lettered in blue with decoration in silver, blue and green: Binding A lacks the silver outline to the front-cover title, while Binding B has the title outlined in silver and is the binding associated with the second state
- Dealers additionally record a text-block measurement point on second-state copies (the text block on p.4 measuring 5-the printed price inches tall) and slight type damage near the top of p.150 on later first-state copies
- One caveat for honest use: dealer state-nomenclature is not fully consistent — some catalogue a separate title-page variant that escaped the publisher with no copyright notice at all — so the definitive sequence should be taken from Bibliographia Oziana (Greene & Hanff, International Wizard of Oz Club) rather than from catalogue shorthand
- Publisher imprint reads Reilly & Britton

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | L. Frank Baum (illus. John R. Neill) |
| Publisher | Reilly & Britton |
| Year | 1904 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | The title page must read "The Marvelous Land of Oz" over the Reilly & Britton, Chicago imprint |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
The title page must read "The Marvelous Land of Oz" over the Reilly & Britton, Chicago imprint. The first state has a copyright page carrying no month; the second state adds the line "Published, July, 1904". Collate for 16 tipped-in colour plates by John R. Neill, each with a typeset caption. Binding is red cloth with the front cover pictorially stamped and the title lettered in blue with decoration in silver, blue and green: Binding A lacks the silver outline to the front-cover title, while Binding B has the title outlined in silver and is the binding associated with the second state. Dealers additionally record a text-block measurement point on second-state copies (the text block on p.4 measuring 5-the printed price inches tall) and slight type damage near the top of p.150 on later first-state copies. One caveat for honest use: dealer state-nomenclature is not fully consistent — some catalogue a separate title-page variant that escaped the publisher with no copyright notice at all — so the definitive sequence should be taken from Bibliographia Oziana (Greene & Hanff, International Wizard of Oz Club) rather than from catalogue shorthand.

## Is this the true first?
US-only origination, and the census claim is correct: Reilly & Britton, Chicago, 1904 is the true first, with no UK or other-language edition preceding it. The trap is the title itself — the title was shortened to "The Land of Oz" within the same year, so 1904-dated copies reading "The Land of Oz" on the title page are a later state, not the first. Only "The Marvelous Land of Oz" on the title page is in contention for the first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
A Reilly & Lee imprint is conclusively later — the firm was renamed from Reilly & Britton in 1919, so any Reilly & Lee copy is a reprint regardless of the 1904 copyright date. "The Land of Oz" shortened title and "Popular Edition" wording on the title page or spine are reprint tells. Later printings are also reported to carry a reduced colour-plate count against the 16 plates called for in early printings, so collating the plates screens many reprints.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Marvelous Land of Oz* by L. Frank Baum (illus. John R. Neill) a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-marvelous-land-of-oz
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.