With the publication of his 25th book, What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy, in 2007, writer Gregory Maguire continued his highly imaginative exploration of fairy tale and fantasy worlds in children's and adult fiction. He was best known for his first adult novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995), more than three million copies of which were in print by early 2007. Many readers sought out the book after seeing the record-setting hit musical Wicked (2003), which was adapted from Maguire's novel by Stephen L. Schwartz (music and lyrics) and Winnie Holzman (book).
Maguire had been fascinated since childhood with L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz (1900) and the 1939 movie made of the story. Building upon Baum's classic tale and extending it backward in time, Maguire told the Wicked Witch's side of the story from her own perspective, revealing that she was lonely and misunderstood, not evil.
Maguire lost his mother when she died of complications from his birth. Although he grew up with a loving stepmother, the loss affected his writing profoundly, and almost all of his stories featured a character who had lost a parent. Encouraged in his love of literature, he began writing at a young age. He earned a B.A. (1976) from the State University of New York at Albany. In 1978—the same year his first children's book, The Lightning Time, was published—he graduated with an M.A. in children's literature from Simmons College in Boston. He taught there until 1986, when the children's literature program foundered, and he was consequently among the organizers the following year of Children's Literature New England, a nonprofit organization that fostered the role of literature in children's lives. In 1990 he received a Ph.D. in English and American literature from Tufts University, Medford, Mass.
Acting on some of his earliest interests, Maguire wrote a number of books for children, including the fantasy The Daughter of the Moon (1980), the science-fiction book I Feel Like the Morning Star, (1989), and the picture book Lucas Fishbone (1990). A seven-book series, The Hamlet Chronicles, featured the popular titles Seven Spiders Spinning (1994) and Six Haunted Hairdos (1997) and finished with One Final Firecracker (2005).
After writing Wicked, Maguire continued to intersperse adult titles with his steady production of works for children. These included Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999), Lost (2001), Mirror Mirror (2003), and the Wicked sequel—and second title in a projected trilogy—Son of a Witch (2005).
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