It started with one book in 1900 and grew into a series of 40 books, stage shows, several movies, and related novelties. The Wizard of Oz is a distinctly American fairy tale and, a century after it was first published, one of the longest-running mass media sensations.

The Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 when its author, L. Frank Baum, was 44 years old. By the time he died in 1919, Baum had written 13 other books set in Oz, including the Ozma of Oz and The Emerald City of Oz, as well as many other books for children and for adults. The Oz books were so well loved that Baum's publishers continued to reissue them into the 1960s. Long before that, The Wizard of Oz had captured the hearts of theatergoers. A stage version opened in Chicago in 1902. It was a hit and moved on to New York in 1903 to become one of the great successes in Broadway history. Oz stories graced the silent movie screen and in 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released its film version, which quickly became a Hollywood sensation, capturing the imagination of Depression-era audiences as well as the subsequent generations that followed.