Reply #10: "no historical evidence", "no basis in fact"

[troubleinwinter]

Was The Wizard of Oz written as a political allegory?

The theory was written by Henry Littlefield when he was a high school teacher and published in the spring 1964 issue of the American Quarterly. Since that time, the theory has been widely publicized in academic journals and the popular press.

In the spring 1992 issue, The Baum Bugle ran two articles about the populism theory. One of the articles was by Littlefield, who explained how he and his students made up the theory as a project for a summer history school class.

The other article documented the uncritical acceptance of the theory as the real motivation behind Baum's writing of The Wizard of Oz. That article showed how academics and popular writers repeated and embellished the theory even though there was no historical evidence to support it.

Littlefield's original article in the American Quarterly can be found in many libraries. It was also reprinted in The Wizard of Oz edited by Michael Patrick Hearn and published by Shocken Books as part of the Critical Heritage Series.

The Bugle articles have been reprinted in a pamphlet. If you would like copies of the articles, please send a large (9" x 12") self-addressed envelope with 55 cents in stamps to:

Michael Gessel
P.O. Box 748
Arlington, Virginia 22216

http://www.ozclub.org/iwocfaq.asp

Michael Patrick Hearn, the leading scholar on L. Frank Baum... wrote that he had found "no evidence that Baum's story is in any way a Populist allegory"; Littlefield's argument, Hearn concluded, "has no basis in fact." A month later, Henry M. Littlefield responded to Hearn's letter, agreeing that "there is no basis in fact to consider Baum a supporter of turn-of-the-century Populist ideology." http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/Populism.htm