Galinda gets her own Oz origin story
Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West first appeared in 1995, reworking L. Frank Baum’s Oz through Elphaba’s eyes. The novel gave its supposedly wicked witch a more layered identity and later became the basis for the Broadway musical that opened in 2003.
The stage production helped make Elphaba and Glinda two of modern musical theatre’s best-known characters. Maguire subsequently expanded his version of Oz with Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men and Out of Oz. His 2026 return, Elphie: A Wicked Childhood, looks at Elphaba’s early years.
The next book turns the attention to Galinda. Galinda: A Charmed Childhood explores the girl who begins life as Galinda Upland, before becoming the Good Witch better known as Glinda. It is a prequel rather than a continuation of the original novel’s events, and its Australian release timing makes it one to watch for readers following the wider Wicked story.
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What is Galinda: A Charmed Childhood about?
The novel examines Galinda’s childhood before her time as Elphaba’s popular roommate at Shiz University and long before her celebrated arrival in a bubble. In Maguire’s continuity, she is the youngest of four children in a once-aristocratic family whose fortunes have declined.
Galinda’s upbringing is comfortable in some respects, yet she is also neglected within her family. Dancing occupies much of her early life, while status and social expectations shape how she sees the world around her.
Her father becomes caught up in disputes with local merchants, creating tensions that Galinda does not yet fully understand. She instead concentrates on how charm, poise and talent might help secure a better future.
That perspective gives the book room to explore how the confident, popular and carefully presented Good Witch was formed. Like Maguire’s earlier work, it revisits Baum’s Oz through a revisionist lens rather than simply retelling the familiar story.
When is the book released?
Galinda: A Charmed Childhood is scheduled for publication on 29 September 2026, which is two weeks after the article’s 16 September publication date. William Morrow is publishing the US edition, with international editions also planned.
The book is 272 pages and is listed in hardcover, ebook and audiobook formats. Retail listings include Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
A new perspective on a familiar witch
Readers who discovered Wicked through the Broadway musical or its two-part film adaptation will find another route into Maguire’s more complex Oz. This time, the story begins before Galinda becomes the Glinda audiences recognise, focusing on the family pressures and ambitions that helped shape her.
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