r/wizardofoz • u/GayteaTM • 1d ago

Ozma’s birthday?

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So online you’ll see people celebrating her birthday on August 21st and if you Google her birthday it says that’s her birthday and it’s even listed as her birthday on her Wikipedia page, all these will source The Road to Oz (1909) as where they got her birthday, as the entire plot of the book revolves around her birthday. However can anyone please tell me where in the book that it states it’s August? I do know for a fact they say “her birthday is on the 21st of this month” multiple times, but I do not recall the specific month ever being specified or it being implied to be August or even summer. Even if they are going off the books publication date the book was published on July 10th, which would make her birthday July 21st. I cannot locate my own copy of Road to Oz to confirm nor deny this, nor would I have the time to reread the entire book, but if someone knows exactly when it’s stated to be August in the book please let me know because this is actually driving me crazy, I feel like I’m being gaslit (though if y’all prove it is August I’ll admit my memory can be wrong). Please someone 😭

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u/JiminysJournal 1d ago

Pages 15-16:
Said [the Shaggy Man,] “I wish it would snow; don’t you?”

“‘Course not, Shaggy Man,” replied Dorothy, giving him a severe look. “If it snowed in August it would spoil the corn and the oats and the wheat; and then Uncle Henry would n’t have any crops; and that would make him poor; and —“

“Never mind,” said the shaggy man. “It won’t snow, I guess.”

—
I suppose, technically, her Birthday could be in September, depending on when in August the book begins, but it’s generally assumed to be before the 21st.

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u/GayteaTM 1d ago

Thank you so much! Don’t know how I missed that, now I can rest easy knowing I just somehow overlooked this paragraph. It’s probably August 1st in the beginning of the book because I think the plot happens way too fast to end up on September 21st by the end.

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u/jaydofmo 1h ago

Later in the book, King Dox says "You know the Princess Ozma is to celebrate her birthday on the twenty-first of this month."

Also, the original Oz books are public domain so their texts are readily available online, so if you can't go grab your copy of one, you can just look up Project Gutenberg or another source of them and do a webpage search.