The Woggle-Bug Book
The Woggle-Bug Book is an unusual side entry in the Oz catalogue. Published in 1905 as a tie-in to the failed 1905 stage musical adaptation of The Marvelous Land of Oz, the book follows the highly educated Wogglebug character from that novel as he wanders through small-town America in his loud checkered suit. He repeatedly falls in love with various human women, then loses interest, then falls in love with the next one.
The humor is closer to vaudeville than to the rest of the Oz canon, and the book is short, more illustrated chapbook than novel. It is not usually included in standard lists of the fourteen Baum Oz books. Modern editions can be hard to find, and the contents have not aged uniformly well. Of interest mostly to completists who want every Baum-authored Oz-adjacent text, or to readers studying the failed 1905 stage musical and its commercial fallout.
About the Author
Lyman Frank Baum was born in 1856 in Chittenango, New York, into a wealthy family that owned oil interests in Pennsylvania. His early career was famously erratic. He tried theatre, sold axle grease, ran a dry-goods store in South Dakota during the bust years of…
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