The Silver Princess in Oz

Ruth Plumly Thompson (1891 - 1976) was an American writer of children's stories, best known for writing many novels placed in Oz, the fictional land of L. Frank Baum's classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels. An avid reader of Baum's books and a lifelong children's writer, Thompson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began her writing career in 1914 when she took a job with the Philadelphia Public Ledger; she wrote a weekly children's column for the newspaper. She had already published her first children's book, The Perhappsy Chaps, and her second, The Princess of Cozytown, was pending publication when William Lee, vice president of Baum's publisher Reilly & Lee, solicited Thompson to continue the Oz series. (Rumors among fans that Thompson was Baum's niece were untrue.) Between 1921 and 1939, she wrote one Oz book a year.

John R. Neill was born in Philadelphia in 1877. In 1904, at the age of twenty-six, Neill received his first major book assignment, as illustrator for The Marvelous Land of Oz. From then until his death in 1943, Neill would illustrate over forty Oz books, including three he wrote himself. Today, his fabulous illustrations are synonymous with Oz.