The George M. Hill Company was the Chicago publishing house that published several of the early works of L. Frank Baum, most notably The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). George M. Hill was a bookbinder in Chicago as early as 1880. In 1898 he started his own publishing firm. At first he concentrated on the steady market for reprints of books, rather than the riskier trade in new books. Yet Hill soon branched out, primarily with the work of local author Baum, starting with his Father Goose in 1899. (The cautious Hill required Baum and illustrator W. W. Denslow to pay some of the costs of that initial project.) With the success of Father Goose, the Hill company issued an abundant supply of Baum's output: