The Enchanted Island of Yew

L. Frank Baum wrote the children's fantasy book The Enchanted Island of Yew: Whereon Prince Marvel Encountered the High Ki of Twi and Other Surprising People, which was released by the Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1903. The initial printing was dedicated to Kenneth Gage Baum, the youngest of the author's four sons, and featured eight color plates as well as numerous colored-ink images stamped over the text. In her biography of Baum, Katharine Rogers mentions that in his stage adaptation of Edith Ogden Harrison's Prince Silverwings and Other Fairy Tales (1902), Baum first used the name Kwytoffle. Baum and Harrison were collaborating in 1903 on a stage adaptation of Baum's popular book. The play was scheduled to premiere in the summer of 1904, but the devastating Iroquois Theater Fire in December 1903 compelled the mayor of Chicago-curiously, Edith Harrison's husband-to order the closure of the city's theaters. Never did Silverwings make it to the boards. In the middle and latter decades of the 20th century, The Enchanted Island of Yew was out of print for more than fifty years. The small press Buckethead Enterprises of Oz reprinted it in 1988 with Cory's illustrations.