The Tiger's Eye

The Tiger's Eye: A Jungle Fairy Tale is a short story by L. Frank Baum, famous as the creator of the Land of Oz. The story was unpublished in its own era, but has attracted significant attention since its belated publication in 1962.

Baum wrote the story most likely in 1905, to conclude his series of Animal Fairy Tales. The nine stories in that collection first appeared in nine consecutive issues of The Delineator, a popular women's magazine of the day, in 1905. "The Tiger's Eye," however, was not printed in the magazine, "probably because it was considered too frightening for small children."[1] "Baum indicated in a letter" that the story "was intended to be the tenth of the Animal Fairy Tales in a planned book edition,"[2] but such an edition was not published until 1969, five decades after Baum's death.

"The Tiger's Eye" was "Perhaps...too strong meat for the taste of its day...."[3] It did not appear in print until it was included in a special L. Frank Baum issue of The American Book Collector.[4] The story was printed again in The Baum Bugle in 1979.[5]

  1. ^ Katharine M. Rogers, L. Frank Baum, Creator of Oz: A Biography, New York, St. Martin's Press. 2002; p. 134.
  2. ^ L. Frank Baum, Animal Fairy Tales, with an Introduction by Russell P. McFall, Kinderhook, IL, The International Wizard of Oz Club, 1989; see McFall's Introduction, p. 7.
  3. ^ Frank Joslyn Baum and Russell P. McFall, To Please a Child: A Biography of L. Frank Baum, Royal Historian of Oz, Chicago, Reilly & Lee, 1962; p. 223.
  4. ^ The American Book Collector, Vol. 13 No. 4 (December 1962), pp. 21-24.
  5. ^ The Baum Bugle, Vol. 23 No. 1 (Spring 1979), pp. 14-18.