Editing L. Frank Baum (section)

====Political imagery in ''The Wizard of Oz''====
{{Main|Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz}}

Numerous political references to the "Wizard" appeared early in the 20th century. [[Henry Littlefield]], an upstate New York high school history teacher, wrote a scholarly article in 1964, the first full-fledged interpretation of the novel as an extended metaphor of the politics and characters of the 1890s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.amphigory.com/oz.htm |title=The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism.first=Henry |last=LittlefieldHenry |work=American Quarterly. v. 16, 3, Spring 1964, 47–58 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100819173851/http://www.amphigory.com/oz.htm |archive-date=August 19, 2010 }}</ref> He paid special attention to the [[Populist Party (United States)|Populist]] metaphors and debates over silver and gold.<ref>Attebery, pp. 86–87.</ref> He published a poem in support of [[William McKinley]].<ref>[http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/Populism.htm Oz Populism Theory<!-- bot-generated title -->] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130925125738/http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/Populism.htm |date=September 25, 2013 }} at www.halcyon.com</ref>

Since 1964, many scholars, economists, and historians have expanded on Littlefield's interpretation, pointing to multiple similarities between the characters (especially as depicted in Denslow's illustrations) and stock figures from editorial cartoons of the period. Littlefield wrote to ''The New York Times'' letters to the editor section spelling out that his theory had no basis in fact, but that his original point was "not to label Baum, or to lessen any of his magic, but rather, as a history teacher at Mount Vernon High School, to invest turn-of-the-century America with the imagery and wonder I have always found in his stories."<ref>{{cite web|access-date=December 20, 2008|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE4D9143CF934A35751C0A964958260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/M/Motion%20Pictures|title='Oz' Author Kept Intentions to Himself|date=February 7, 1992|publisher=The New York Times Company}}</ref>

Baum's newspaper had addressed politics in the 1890s, and Denslow was an editorial cartoonist as well as an illustrator of children's books. A series of political references is included in the 1902 stage version, such as references to the President, to a powerful senator, and to John D. Rockefeller for providing the oil needed by the Tin Woodman. Scholars have found few political references in Baum's Oz books after 1902. Baum was asked whether his stories had hidden meanings, but he always replied that they were written to "please children".<ref>{{cite book|last=Tuerk|first=Richard|title=Oz in Perspective: Magic and Myth in the L. Frank Baum Books|date=2015|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-786-48291-7|page=6}}</ref>