Synopsis

Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad is a young adult novel written by L. Frank Baum, famous as the creator of the Land of Oz. It was the second volume in the ten-novel series Aunt Jane's Nieces, which was, after the Oz books, the second greatest success of Baum's literary career. Like the other books in the series, the novel appeared under the pen name "Edith Van Dyne," one of Baum's multiple pseudonyms.

The second book in the Aunt Jane's series picks up where the first left off. The eccentric and down-to-earth millionaire John Merrick decides to take his three beloved nieces – Patsy Doyle, Elizabeth de Graf, and Louise Merrick – on a tour of Europe. The parents of the three girls react variously, but don't oppose the trip; Mrs. Merrick, Louise's mother, wants to accompany them as chaperone, a prospect that Uncle John rejects out of hand. Still, Mrs. Merrick allows her daughter to go; she wants to separate Louise from Arthur Weldon, the young man who has been courting her. (The social-climbing Mrs. Merrick is desperate for Louise to land a rich husband. Weldon's father is a wealthy railroad magnate, but the father and son are in a clash of generations and the elder Weldon threatens to disown the younger).

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