1971
Martin Gardner
(1914-2010)
Martin Gardner was a founding member of the International Wizard of Oz Club. He often said he learned to read by looking over his mother’s shoulder as she read The Wizard of Oz.
The first detailed account of Baum’s life was Martin’s “The Royal Historian of Oz,” a two-part essay published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and revised and expanded in 1957 for The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was, published by Michigan State University Press. Martin also wrote the introductions to six paperback facsimile editions of Baum fantasies as well as numerous articles for The Baum Bugle.
Martin’s best-known work is probably The Annotated Alice, with its illuminating scholarly notes on Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. But he also conducted the mathematical games and puzzles column for Scientific American for many years, and produced numerous books on similar themes. In 1998 he published his first Oz novel, Visitors from Oz: The Wild Adventures of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman.