 First edition | |
| Author | L. Frank Baum (as "Edith Van Dyne") |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | James McCracken |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Aunt Jane's Nieces |
| Genre | Young adult fiction |
| Publisher | Reilly & Britton |
Publication date | 1914 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 316 pp. |
| Preceded by | Aunt Jane's Nieces on the Ranch |
| Followed by | Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross |
Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West is the penultimate novel in the Aunt Jane's Nieces series, written by L. Frank Baum as "Edith Van Dyne" and published in 1914.
Aunt Jane's Nieces is the title of a juvenile novel published by Reilly & Britton in 1906, and written by L. Frank Baum under the pen name "Edith Van Dyne." Since the book was the first in a series of novels designed for adolescent girls, its title was applied to the entire series of ten books, published between 1906 and 1918.
Lyman Frank Baum was an American author chiefly famous for his children's books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels. He wrote 14 novels in the Oz series, plus 41 other novels, 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts. He made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and the nascent medium of film; the 1939 adaptation of the first Oz book would become a landmark of 20th-century cinema. His works anticipated such century-later commonplaces as television, augmented reality, laptop computers, wireless telephones, women in high-risk and action-heavy occupations, and the ubiquity of advertising on clothing.
In the novel, Beth de Graf and Patsy Doyle, staying in Hollywood, California after parting from their cousin's California ranch in the previous novel, stumble onto the set of a film depicting a collapsing building. Beth is horrified that they have become unwitting extras in a motion picture, for the films she has seen she found atrocious and contrived. Uncle John Merrick offers to let them meet a filmmaker before they form a lasting opinion on the medium, and this filmmaker turns out to be Otis Werner, the same director who shot the film. He argues that the building was falling apart and that the film uses a story to convey the dangers of the use of crumbling factories, for in the film, the factory owner's daughter is killed by a collapsing wall, and he is forced to rethink his life because he has done it all to provide for her.
Aunt Jane's Nieces on the Ranch is a 1913 novel by L. Frank Baum writing as "Edith Van Dyne". The novel depicts a story of racial tension on the California ranch owned by the progressive-minded Arthur Weldon and Louise Merrick Weldon, who have entrusted their baby, Jane, nicknamed "Toodlums," to a Mexican governess named Inez.
Beth is convinced that films can have edifying messages, and along with Patsy and their cousins, Arthur Weldon and Louise Merrick Weldon, look into starting a venture of their own to produce films intended specifically for children. Uncle John is proud to support this measure.
While at a restaurant, they meet the starlet sisters Maud and Flo Stanton and their own Aunt Jane, who stay at the same hotel, the Continental, which is owned by Continental Pictures. On an afternoon off, they join the Stantons as the beach, where Maud saves a frail young man from drowning.
The man claims to be A. Jones, with no first name—a joke of his parents, his father being distantly related to John Paul Jones—a native of an island called Sangoa that his father purchased from Uruguay. He becomes devoted to the Stantons and the nieces, and claims to have the means to support a chain of twenty theatres for the girls, which will be more cost effective than the one or two that they had planned. Soon after, he presents them with pearls that he says are gathered from the island.
John Paul Jones was the United States' first well-known naval commander in the American Revolutionary War. He made many friends and enemies—who accused him of piracy—among America's political elites, and his actions in British waters during the Revolution earned him an international reputation which persists to this day. As such, he is sometimes referred to as the "Father of the American Navy".
Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in the southeastern region of South America. It borders Argentina to its west and Brazil to its north and east, with the Río de la Plata to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast. Uruguay is home to an estimated 3.44 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the metropolitan area of its capital and largest city, Montevideo. With an area of approximately 176,000 square kilometers (68,000 sq mi), Uruguay is geographically the second-smallest nation in South America, after Suriname.
A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as a conulariid. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers. The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other shapes, known as baroque pearl can occur. The finest quality natural of pearls have been highly valued as gemstones and objects of beauty for many centuries. Because of this, pearl has become a metaphor for something rare, fine, admirable and valuable.
An jewel inspector named Isidore Le Drieux is convinced that A. Jones is the same as a jewel thief, and that Jones's pearls are stolen from a countess in Vienna. He thinks he can easily prove his case, although based on circumstantial evidence, and will soon have Jones extradited, though Uncle John and the others are quite certain, with the more information that they gather, that Le Drieux's case is full of holes and spend the rest of the novel working to prove Jones's innocence. To this effect, John Merrick hires a fresh young guitar-playing attorney, Fred A. Colby, a recent graduate of Penn Law School who has never fought a case and is eager to prove himself.
Vienna is the federal capital, largest city and one of nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primate city, with a population of about 1.9 million, and its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was the largest German-speaking city in the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, the city had 2 million inhabitants. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin. Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the eastern part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region. Along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In July 2017 it was moved to the list of World Heritage in Danger.
Circumstantial evidence is evidence that relies on an inference to connect it to a conclusion of fact—such as a fingerprint at the scene of a crime. By contrast, direct evidence supports the truth of an assertion directly—i.e., without need for any additional evidence or inference.
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that usually has six strings. It is typically played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the finger(s)/fingernails of one hand, while simultaneously fretting with the fingers of the other hand. The sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar, or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker.
Otis Werner is a thinly veiled reference to Otis Turner, a director of The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays and a film version of John Dough and the Cherub . In this book, Baum also name-drops himself by having Uncle John make reference to fairytale authors whose work had been filmed. It also contains Edith Van Dyne's only assertion of herself in the series, stating that because she was not a pretty girl, her mother would tell her that those who have beauty have little else, which Mrs. Van Dyne uses to contrast with the brains and beauty of Maud Stanton.
Otis Turner was an American director, screenwriter and producer. Between 1908 and 1917, he directed 133 films and wrote 40 scenarios. He was born in Fairfield, Indiana, and died in Los Angeles.
The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays was an early attempt to bring L. Frank Baum's Oz books to the motion picture screen. It was a mixture of live actors, hand-tinted magic lantern slides, and film. Baum himself would appear as if he were giving a lecture, while he interacted with the characters. Although acclaimed throughout its tour, the show experienced budgetary problems and folded after two months of performances. It opened in Grand Rapids, Michigan on September 24, 1908. After First National acquired Selig, the film was re-released in September 24, 1925. It then opened in Orchestra Hall in Chicago on October 1, toured the country and ended its run in New York City. There, it was scheduled to run through December 31, and ads for it continued to run in The New York Times until then, but it reportedly closed on December 16.
John Dough and the Cherub is a children's fantasy novel written by American author L. Frank Baum, about a living gingerbread man and his adventures. It was illustrated by John R. Neill, and published in 1906 by the Reilly & Britton Company. The story was serialized in the Washington Sunday Star and other newspapers from October to December 1906. Like the Oz books but unlike many of the author's other works, John Dough was issued under Baum's name rather than one of his pseudonyms. The book was popular; as late as 1919 it was selling 1500 copies a year. The 1974 Dover Publications edition features an introduction by Martin Gardner.
The Stanton and Jones characters return in the next and final volume in the Aunt Jane's Nieces series, Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross .
Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross is a 1915 young adult novel written by L. Frank Baum, famous as the creator of the Land of Oz. It is the tenth and final volume in Baum's Aunt Jane's Nieces series of books for adolescent girls — the second greatest success of his publishing career, after the Oz books themselves. As with all the previous books in the series, Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross was released under the pen name "Edith Van Dyne," one of Baum's various pseudonyms.
