Copyright status of The Wizard of Oz and related works in the United States
"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was published in 1900, and was the first to enter the public domain in "1956". This allowed Reilly & Lee, the publisher of all the other Oz books (as well as Baum's other books) to issue their own edition of "The Wizard of Oz", which had previously been published by George M. Hill Company and later by the Bobbs Merill Company after Hill went bankrupt..
Gerald Duckworth
In 1898, Duckworth founded the publishing company which bears his name, Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd, in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. In his first year, 1898–99, he published Henry James's "In the Cage"; Leslie Stephen's "English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century"; "Jocelyn" by John Sinjohn, a nom-de-plume of John Galsworthy; a translation of August Strindberg's "Der Vater"; and "Mother Goose in Prose", the first children's book by L. Frank Baum, and the first book illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. (Baum's most famous work, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", was published in Chicago just a year later.)