The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Undoubtedly the best-known title of a series (along with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women) is this first offering of the Oz books from the pen of L. Frank Baum. Baum wrote fourteen Oz books between 1900 and his death in 1919; Ruth Plumly Thompson added nineteen more between 1921 and […]

and how they grew Few nineteenth-century series are familiar to readers, young or old, today. One series that is recognized today is the “Little Peppers,” twelve titles published from 1880 to 1916. The first book, shown here in facsimile, appeared first in installments in the popular children’s magazine Wide Awake in 1880. The series chronicles […]

Re-Imaging in Girls’ Series Books From the earliest, highly moralistic examples in the 1840s to the twenty-first century examples echoing the lifestyles and values of today’s youth, girls’ books in general and girls’ series in particular have shown a marked evolution. Many of the most popular series in the nineteenth-century—Jacob Abbott’s “Lucy” series, Joanna Mathews’ […]