BAUM, L. Frank.
The Master Key: An Electrical Fairy Tale Founded Upon the Mysteries of Electricity and the Optimism of Its Devotees.
FIRST EDITION, SECOND PRINTING, BINDING A. Indianapolis: The Bowen-Merrill Company, 1901. Illustrations by F. Y. Cory (Fanny Young Cory).
8vo. 245 pp. Olive-green cloth with mounted color illustration label to the front board, gilt-ruled and decorated; "BOWEN MERRILL" imprint on the lower spine and the comma in the last line of the copyright page to the right of the "n" in "Brooklyn"; title blind-stamped on the rear board. Twelve full-color plates by Cory, including a tissue-guarded frontispiece, plus numerous black-and-white in-text illustrations. Bienvenue & Schmidt p. 196; Schiller 77. Near fine: light wear to extremities, corners just starting to show through, front hinge cracked; color label intact with mild surface wear.
L. Frank Baum's children's novel of 1901, published the year after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and widely classified as one of the earliest American science-fiction novels for children. Its protagonist, Rob Joslyn — generally thought to be modeled on Baum's second son, Robert Stanton Baum (born 1886, about fifteen at publication), to whom the book is dedicated — is a boy electrical experimenter whose tinkering accidentally summons the Daemon of Electricity, who grants him a succession of marvelous "gifts."
SKU TO-2026-138
