Ruth Plumly Thompson (1891-1976) was an American author best known as the principal successor to L. Frank Baum in continuing the Oz book series. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she began her career as a journalist and writer of children's verse and stories for newspapers, including a long stint writing a children's page for the Philadelphia Public Ledger. After Baum's death in 1919, Reilly & Lee, the publisher of the Oz series, selected Thompson to carry on the annual Oz book tradition. Beginning with The Royal Book of Oz in 1921, credited jointly to Baum and Thompson though written entirely by her, she went on to write nineteen Oz books published yearly through 1939, far more than any other author in the series, including Baum himself. Her Oz novels introduced numerous now-familiar characters and lands, expanding the geography and cast of Oz considerably beyond Baum's original conception, with a lighter, more whimsical and pun-filled tone than her predecessor's work. Beyond Oz, Thompson wrote other fantasy and children's fiction, including the Yankee in Oz-adjacent works and independent titles such as King, King, Fair Cow and the Curious Cruise of Captain Santa. She also wrote plays and additional verse for young readers. Thompson's contributions cemented Oz as a multi-author franchise rather than a single-author work, and she remains, alongside Baum, one of the two most prolific contributors to the canonical Oz series. She continued writing into old age and died in 1976, having shaped several generations of readers' image of the Land of Oz.
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