Betsy Bobbin
| Betsy Bobbin | |
|---|---|
| Oz character | |
 | |
| First appearance | The Tik-Tok Man of Oz (1913) |
| Last appearance | arguable |
| Created by | L. Frank Baum |
| In-universe information | |
| Species | human |
| Gender | female |
| Nationality | United 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. According to Ruth Plumly Thompson, Betsy was made a Princess of Oz.
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 more passive than Dorothy, however, and in one book even described as shy.
Betsy is usually pictured as having blonde or light-brown hair, though in a few appearances she is drawn as a brunette. In The Lost Princess of Oz she 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, in which she helps a young prince from a Kingdom called Rash regain his throne.
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]
In the Tarot of Oz, by artist David Sexton, Betsy Bobbin is the "Princess of Stones" and is referred to as the "Lady Betsy Bobbin".
References
- ^ Jack Snow, Who's Who in Oz, Chicago, Reilly & Lee, 1954; New York, Peter Bedrick Books, 1988; p. 16.
- ^ Gregory D. Hunter, Two Terrific Tales of Oz, Buckethead Enterprises, 1987
