Phoebe Daring
 First edition | |
| Author | L. Frank Baum |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Joseph Pierre Nuyttens |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Daring Twins |
| Genre | Mystery |
| Publisher | Reilly & Britton |
Publication date | 1912 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Phoebe Daring: A Story for Young Folk is a mystery novel for juvenile readers, written by L. Frank Baum, the author of the Oz books. Published in 1912, it was a sequel to the previous year's The Daring Twins, and the second and final installment in a proposed series of similar books.[1] Phoebe Daring was illustrated by Joseph Pierre Nuyttens, the artist who illustrated Baum's The Flying Girl, Annabel, and The Flying Girl and Her Chum in the same period. Hungry Tiger Press announced that they would reprint the book as Unjustly Accused! in the back of their 2006 reprint of the first book as The Secret of the Lost Fortune.
Like The Daring Twins, Phoebe Daring involves two orphaned twins, Philip and Phoebe Daring; as its title indicates, the sister takes the primary role in the second book, which delivers a plot about a good man unjustly suspected of a crime – very much as the first one did. This similarity, and lack of originality, might be the best explanation for the book's limited popular success and the termination of the Daring Twins series after two books.
It is clear that Baum had hopes of more Daring Twins novels, involving the younger of the five Daring siblings and eventually their children as well.[2] Evidence suggests that he wrote at least a third book in the series; in the papers left after Baum's death in 1919, the file that contained the manuscript for his last Oz book, Glinda of Oz, was labelled Phoebe Daring, Conspirator. Baum's correspondence with his publisher, Reilly & Britton, mentions yet another book, titled either Phil Daring's Experiment or The Daring Twins' Experiment. Yet nothing of these other Daring books is known to have survived.
The girl-detective concept[3] had a persistent hold on Baum's imagination. He returned to it in a more successful series, the Mary Louise novels that he began in 1916.