The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a
children's novel written by
L. Frank Baum and illustrated by
W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the
George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name
The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of both the
1902 stage play and the
1939 film version. The story chronicles the adventures of a young girl named
Dorothy Gale in the
Land of Oz, after being swept away from her Kansas farm home in a storm. Thanks in part to the 1939 MGM movie, it is one of the best-known stories in American popular culture and has been widely translated. Its initial success, and the success of the popular 1902 Broadway musical which Baum adapted from his original story, led to Baum's writing thirteen more
Oz books. The original book has been in the
public domain in the US since 1956.