Prince Silverwings and Other Stories is a 1902 children's book by Edith Ogden Harrison

Edith Ogden Harrison

Edith Ogden Harrison was a well-known and prolific author of children's books and fairy tales in the early decades of the twentieth century. She was also the wife of Carter Harrison, Jr., five-term mayor of Chicago....

. The book is best known because she collaborated with L. Frank Baum

L. Frank Baum

Lyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...

 on an uncompleted stage adaptation

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 of the book as a musical exravaganza

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

. Baum composed music for the play as well, and at least one of these songs, "Down Among the Marshes," survives and has been recorded by James Patrick Doyle on his 1999 album, Before the Rainbow: The Original Music of Oz, and Baum scholar Michael O. Riley published a complete edition of their Scenario and General Synopsis for the play through the Pamami Press in 1982 in a limited run of 125 copies in white cloth bound in purple with illustrations by Dick Martin

Dick Martin (artist)

Dickinson P. Martin was an artist from Chicago who illustrated a number of books related to The Oz books series, most notably, Merry Go Round in Oz , the 40th and final title in the regular series, as well as many other children's books. He wrote and illustrated The Ozmapolitan of Oz, published...

. It is otherwise known only from a typescript in the Chicago Historical Society.

The play, which was never staged, is discussed at length in "The Faltering Flight of Prince Silverwings" by David L. Greene, Peter Hanff, and Michael Patrick Hearn

Michael Patrick Hearn

Michael Patrick Hearn is an American literary scholar and one of America's leading men of letters specializing in children's literature and its illustration. His works include The Annotated Wizard of Oz , The Annotated Christmas Carol , and The Annotated Huckleberry Finn...

 in the Autumn, 1974 issue of The Baum Bugle

The Baum Bugle

The Baum Bugle: A Journal of Oz is the official journal of The International Wizard of Oz Club. The journal was founded in 1957, with its first issue released in June of that year . It publishes three times per year, with issues dated Spring, Autumn, and Winter; Issue No. 1 of Volume 50 appeared in...

(18:2). They argue that the work depicts the beginnings of such Oz

Land of Oz

Oz is a fantasy region containing four lands under the rule of one monarch.It was first introduced in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, one of many fantasy countries that he created for his books. It achieved a popularity that none of his other works attained, and after four years, he...

 characters as the Nome King

Nome King

The Nome King is a fictional character in L. Frank Baum's Oz books. Although the Wicked Witch of the West is the most famous of Oz's villains , the Nome King is the closest the book series has to a main antagonist.-In the novels:The character called the Nome King is originally named Roquat the Red...

, Trot

Trot (Oz)

Trot is a fictional character in L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz.Trot is introduced in the novel, The Sea Fairies and first appears in an Oz book in The Scarecrow of Oz . Trot is a little girl with big solemn eyes and an earnest, simple manner. Her real name is Mayre Griffiths...

, Polychrome

Polychrome (fictional character)

Polychrome is a fairy and the daughter of the Rainbow. She first appears in The Road to Oz, the fifth of the fourteen Oz books by L. Frank Baum...

, and John Dough

John Dough

John Dough was a common name for a gingerbread man at the turn of the 20th century, though the best-remembered John Dough is the character created by L. Frank Baum in his 1906 novel, John Dough and the Cherub; the character also makes a cameo appearance in Baum's The Road to Oz...

 as well as the premises for Ozma of Oz

Ozma of Oz

Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Tiktok, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other Good People too Numerous to Mention Faithfully Recorded Herein published on July 30, 1907, was the third book of L....

, Tik-Tok of Oz

Tik-Tok of Oz

Tik-Tok of Oz is the eighth Land of Oz book written by L. Frank Baum, published on June 19, 1914. The book actually has little to do with Tik-Tok and is primarily the quest of the Shaggy Man to rescue his brother, and his resulting conflict with the Nome King.The endpapers of the first edition...

, and Rinkitink in Oz

Rinkitink in Oz

Rinkitink in Oz: Wherein is Recorded the Perilous Quest of Prince Inga of Pingaree and King Rinkitink in the Magical Isles that Lie Beyond the Borderland of Oz. is the tenth book in the Land of Oz series written by L. Frank Baum. Published on June 20, 1916, with full-color and black-and-white...

owe a debt to this collarboration.