# Is "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Geo. M. Hill Co., 1900) is identified by: Hill Co., Chicago & New York, 1900, with W. Geo.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition: Geo
- M. Hill Co., Chicago & New York, 1900, with W. W. Denslow's 24 colour plates; light green pictorial cloth stamped in red and dark green, the 'Geo
- M. Hill Co.' imprint at the foot of the spine
- First-state text points (per Bibliographia Oziana): the publisher's advertisement on p. [2] is enclosed in a box; p
- 14, line 1 reads 'low wail on the wind'; the misprint 'peices' (for 'pieces') stands uncorrected at p
- 81, four lines up; p. [227], line 1 begins 'While the Tin Woodman…'; the colophon is set in eleven lines within a two-line box; and the type is unbroken at pp
- Publisher imprint reads Geo. M. Hill Co.

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | L. Frank Baum |
| Publisher | Geo. M. Hill Co. |
| Year | 1900 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition: Geo |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
First edition: Geo. M. Hill Co., Chicago & New York, 1900, with W. W. Denslow's 24 colour plates; light green pictorial cloth stamped in red and dark green, the 'Geo. M. Hill Co.' imprint at the foot of the spine. First-state text points (per Bibliographia Oziana): the publisher's advertisement on p. [2] is enclosed in a box; p. 14, line 1 reads 'low wail on the wind'; the misprint 'peices' (for 'pieces') stands uncorrected at p. 81, four lines up; p. [227], line 1 begins 'While the Tin Woodman…'; the colophon is set in eleven lines within a two-line box; and the type is unbroken at pp. 100 and 186. First-state colour plates: the plate facing p. 34 shows two dark-blue blots on the moon, and the plate facing p. 92 shows red (pink) shading at the horizon; both are removed in later states. The book bears a single 1900 copyright — there is NO 1899 date anywhere.

## Is this the true first?
Geo. M. Hill 1900 is the true first. First-issue determination is genuinely complex: the text state and the colour-plate states are catalogued in the standard bibliography (Hanff & Greene, Bibliographia Oziana), and the binding variants (light green cloth, imprint stamping and colour) are classified separately from the text state, so a copy must be collated on both. The Bobbs-Merrill reissues, retitled 'The New Wizard of Oz' from 1903, are later editions.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Any imprint other than Geo. M. Hill — Bobbs-Merrill above all, whose reissues carry the 'New Wizard of Oz' title — is a later edition, not the first. Do not assume a Hill imprint alone proves first state: later Hill text and plate states exist (boxless p. [2] advertisement, thirteen-line reset colophon with no box, 'pieces' corrected, plates without the moon-blots or the horizon shading, broken type at pp. 100 and 186). Full first-state confirmation requires collating the text and plate points against Bibliographia Oziana.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Wonderful Wizard of Oz* by L. Frank Baum a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-wonderful-wizard-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.