The Wonderful World of W.W. Denslow, First Illustrator of “The Wizard of Oz”

It’s a heresy, I reckon, that we wrote first here about John R. Neill, the second illustrator of Oz books before treating of the founder W.W. Denslow (1856-1915). The W.W. stands for “William Wallace“, the founder of Scotland, btw. It’s Denslow’s birthday today, as well as National Cartoonists Day, hence today it is his foreordained day.

Denslow came from a Philadelphia tobacco family. He had the means to bum around and find his own way, and he knew what he wanted to do from a young age. As an artist he was mostly self-taught, but he did take the occasional class at the National Academy of Design and Cooper Union. For years he designed Rand McNally Atlases, drew the products in Montgomery Ward Catalogs (prior to the use of photographs for that purpose), did newspaper illustrations, designed books covers, print advertisements, and theatre posters. His attendance of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair was seismic — you can see the influence of the White City on his depictions of the Emerald City. He also became involved with the Arts and Crafts Movement, and was the first resident artist invited to design for the printing press at Roycroft, the Arts and Crafts colony in Buffalo.

In Chicago, Denslow met L. Frank Baum and they became creative partners for a period that was short (1898-1902) but also prolific and formative. Their books together included By the Candelabra’s Glare (1898), Father Goose: His Book (1899), and Dot and Tot of Merryland (1901), and of course their greatest co-creation The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). The men were joint owners of the copyright and brief reflection will confirm that the arrangement was justified. That first Oz book seems every bit Denslow’s creation as Baum’s. Not just on account of the copious illustrations that still linger in the mind in spite of all the pictorial imaginings of Oz that happened after wards, but the entire design of the book. I love those chapter headings where the first part of the text is integrated into the picture:

Success wrought a rift however. When Oz came to Broadway in 1902, Denslow, who owned half the book rights and also designed the sets and costumes, expected half the authors take of the show. Baum felt differently, and they broke up over it. Still owning half the rights to the property, Denslow started work on his own sequel to the book (never finished) and put out a comic strip called Denslow’s Scarecrow and the Tin Man, which ran at the same time as a strip created by Baum and Walt MacDougal, Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz (1904-1905). He also put out his own Father Goose comic strip, based on his illustrations for the Baum book. His other works without Baum included the books Denslow’s Mother Goose (1901), Denslow’s Night Before Christmas (1902) and Denslow’s Picture Books series (1903–04), as well as an innovative comic strip called Billy Bounce, about a boy who had all the properties of a ball. Denslow drew it from 1901 to 1902, after which he handed it over to C.W. Kahles. It ran through 1905. Denslow also illustrated a 1906 book based on the character, commissioning Dudley A. Bragdon to write the text. Another of his major post-Baum works was The Pearl and the Pumpkin: A Classic Halloween Tale (1904), created with writer Paul West.

As you can glean, I think, Denslow worked very hard through these years. He earned every penny of the fortune he earned, making his real life resemble one of the fairy tales he delighted in drawing. I do not exaggerate. He had so much money that he purchased Bluck’s Island in Hamilton Harbor, Bermuda and built a castle there, declaring himself  “King Denslow I, Monarch of Denslow Islands and Protector of Coral Reefs”. By all reports he was a whimsical character, with his bushy walrus mustache, loud, red vests, and flowing cravats. He was fond of corn cob pipes and chewing tobacco.

Not a practical man, as you probably have guessed. In 1908 he sold his island property and returned to living in New York full time. The vogue for Denslow’s kind of illustration waned, so there were no more books. He returned to the kind of work he had done prior to teaming with Baum, designing ads for newspapers and magazines, and the like. In 1915 he scored a big fish though: he sold a cover illustration to Life magazine. He was so ecstatic he promptly drank away the paycheck. The multi-day bender was so strenuous he contract pneumonia and died a couple of days later.

I’ve always thought there were many similarities between Oz and Heaven. (Baum’s last words had been “Now we can cross the Shifting Sands”, in fact). Perhaps the two men were reunited there. As for Denslow’s mortal remains, they reside among many other similar celebrities at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester.

For more illustrators on Travalanche go here.

For more on comics and cartoons go here.

Munchkin-lovers may enjoy my book Rose’s Royal Midgets and Other Little People in Vaudeville, not to mention the related No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.