The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.

First edition of this Christmas classic, inscribed by Baum to the W.W. Denslow, who illustrated The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Octavo, original publisher's bright red pictorial cloth decorated in in green, white and tan, pictorial endpapers, illustrated by Mary Cowles Clark with 20 plates, 6 in full color including frontispiece. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the second blank to illustrator W.W. Denslow, "To my good old friend William Wallace Denslow from L. Frank Baum Chicago November 1902." The recipient, William Wallace Denslow was an American illustrator and caricaturist best remembered for his work in collaboration with L. Frank Baum, most notably his illustrations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. His drawings did more than decorate the text; they established the book’s visual logic, fixing character types, settings, narrative mood in a style shaped by late-nineteenth-century poster art, Art Nouveau ornament, a confident command of line. Denslow’s status as a prominent editorial cartoonist, trained in satire, symbolism, political shorthand, has invited later scholarship to read the Oz images as forms of visual argument, not merely accompaniment, since the habits of caricature often carry social critique into popular fantasy. In this way his association with Baum becomes a study in co-authorship across media, with illustration serving as a parallel narrative voice that helped secure the work’s immediate appeal, then shaped its long cultural afterlife. In very good condition. A very nice example with exceptional provenance, we have never seen another signed inscribed example, let alone with such an association.