The Wicked Witch of Oz

The Wicked Witch of Oz is a novel by Rachel Cosgrove Payes. Written in the early 1950s but not published until four decades later in 1993, the book is an unofficial entry in the series of Oz books by L. Frank Baum and his successors.

Cosgrove Payes had published her first Oz book, The Hidden Valley of Oz, in 1951 with Reilly & Lee, the publisher of the Oz series since the time of Baum. The Wicked Witch of Oz would have been the next book in the series, and was intended for publication in 1954 but Reilly & Lee cancelled the project, since the Oz books were no longer selling well. The book remained unpublished until the International Wizard of Oz Club brought out the first edition in 1993, with illustrations by Eric Shanower. The club declared it book 45 in the series. In the documentary, Oz: The American Fairyland, Payes states that she refused all requests to read her manuscript with "not 'til it's a book."