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Betsy Bobbin
Oz character
File:Betsy Bobbin.jpg
Betsy Bobbin
art by John R. Neill from The Scarecrow of Oz (1915)
First Episode AppearanceThe Tik-Tok Man of Oz (1913)
Final Episode Appearancearguable
Created byL. Frank Baum
In-universe information
Specieshuman
Genderfemale
NationalityUnited States

Betsy Bobbin is a fictional character in L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz.[1]

She first appears in Baum's 1913 stage play The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, and then in his 1914 novel Tik-Tok of Oz, wherein she teams up with the Shaggy Man and together they go to the Nome King's Caverns. In later books, she, Dorothy and Trot are constant companions and allies of Ozma.

Although created as a new character, Betsy has a great deal in common with Dorothy. For example, Dorothy, who is from Kansas, washed up onto the shores of Ev with a chicken named Billina, and Betsy, who is from Oklahoma, arrives in a similar manner with a mule named Hank. Both girls are headstrong and courageous.

Betsy is usually described as having blonde or light-brown hair, and, in The Lost Princess of Oz is said to be one year older than Dorothy Gale. Based on Trot's age (10) in The Giant Horse of Oz, she would be 12, if one accepts Ruth Plumly Thompson as an authority, as Baum said that Trot was a year younger than Dorothy.

Betsy is also the protagonist of Ruth Plumly Thompson's The Hungry Tiger of Oz.

Strangely, more than one of the Oz books start or end with the people of Oz celebrating Betsy's birthday, though it has been claimed as being both in the spring (in Thompson's The Hungry Tiger of Oz) and on Halloween (in Bill Campbell and Irwin Terry's Masquerade in Oz--Campbell has acknowledged that had forgotten the spring reference in the former), although the weather in Oz is generally consistent with being in the Northern Hemisphere.

Greg Hunter wrote a story "Betsy Bobbin of Oz," in which she finds her parents.[2]

References[]

  1. Jack Snow, Who's Who in Oz, Chicago, Reilly & Lee, 1954; New York, Peter Bedrick Books, 1988; p. 16.
  2. Gregory D. Hunter, Two Terrific Tales of Oz, Buckethead Enterprises, 1987

External links[]

Template:Oz

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