Created by L. Frank Baum Gender Female Creator L. Frank Baum | Species Human Nationality American Last appearance arguable | |
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Title Lady Betsy Bobbin
Princess of Stones First appearance The Tik-Tok Man of Oz (1913) Similar Trot, Shaggy Man, Cap'n Bill, Button‑Bright, Kabumpo | ||
Betsy Bobbin is a fictional character in L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz.
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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 Princess 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 Thompson's The Hungry Tiger of Oz, in which she helps a young prince from a kingdom called Rash regain his throne.
By L. Frank Baum
