Success
Father Goose was on sale in September 1899, in plenty of time for the Christmas season. It was a major success, selling more than 75,000 copies. The quality of the illustrations was far beyond anything that had been done in American children's books up to that time. Its marketplace success inspired at least a score of imitations in the next season, an Old Father Gander and a Mother Wild Goose and others; one Chicago newspaper commented on these "Goose pimples in the book trade this year." Denslow's work affected the style of illustration in other children's books, generally for the better.
The critical reception of the book was generally quite positive. Father Goose was also admired and enjoyed by figures like Mark Twain and William Dean Howells. Baum used some of his royalties from the book to buy a lakeside house in Macatawa, Michigan; he named the place "The Sign of the Goose" and decorated it with goose motifs.
Baum and Denslow followed up their triumph with The Songs of Father Goose (1900), which provided musical settings by composer Alberta Neiswanger Hall for 26 of the poems. Though not as popular as the original work, the songbook also sold well. Further projects to capitalize on the success, however, like a Father Goose Calendar, and a musical version that Baum and composer Paul Tietjens worked on in 1904, failed to materialize — though Baum would publish Father Goose's Year Book in 1907.
Selections from Father Goose were reprinted in Baum's 1910 anthology L. Frank Baum's Juvenile Speaker.
Read more about this topic: Father Goose: His Book
Famous quotes containing the word success:
“In looking back over the college careers of those who for various reasons have been prominent in undergraduate life ... one cannot help noticing that these men have nearly always shown from the start an interest in the lives of their fellow students. A large acquaintance means that many persons are dependent on a man and conversely that he himself is dependent on many. Success necessarily means larger responsibilities, and responsibilities mean many friends.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Priests and physicians should never look one another in the face. They have no common ground, nor is there any to mediate between them. When the one comes, the other goes. They could not come together without laughter, or a significant silence, for the one’s profession is a satire on the other’s, and either’s success would be the other’s failure.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When you think of the huge uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, you’re bound to realize that if humankind have not yet finished being revenged, by sheer laughter, for being let down in their greatest hope, it is because that hope was cherished so long and lay so deep!”
—Georges Bernanos (1888–1948)