Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Political interpretations of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" include treatments of the modern fairy tale (written by L. Frank Baum and first published in 1900) as an allegory or metaphor for the political, economic, and social events of America in the 1890s. Scholars have examined four quite different versions of Oz: the novel of 1900, the Broadway play of 1901, the Hollywood film of 1939, and the numerous follow-up Oz novels written after 1900 by Baum and others. The political interpretations focus on the first three, and emphasize the close relationship between
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz be Australia, or perhaps a magical land in the center of the great Australian desert. Another influence lay in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". A September 1900 review in the "Grand Rapids Herald" called "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" a "veritable "Alice in Wonderland" brought up to the present day standard of juvenile literature". Baum found Carroll's plots incoherent, but he identified the books' source of popularity as Alice herself, a child with whom the child readers could identify; this influenced his choice of a protagonist. Baum was also influenced by Carroll's belief that children's books should have many