L. Frank Baum

Life

Lyman Frank Baum was born in 1856 in Chittenango, New York, into a prosperous family; his father had made money in the Pennsylvania oil fields. Baum disliked his first name and went by Frank. He was educated mostly at home, with an unhappy spell at a military academy, and as a young man he tried a remarkable number of occupations: breeding poultry, acting and managing a theater company, writing plays, running a general store, editing a newspaper in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and working as a traveling salesman for a crockery firm.

In 1882 he married Maud Gage, daughter of the women’s suffrage activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, and the couple had four sons. The family moved to Chicago in 1891, and it was there, in his forties, that Baum found his vocation. Mother Goose in Prose (1897) and Father Goose, His Book (1899) sold well, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) was a major success. He wrote thirteen more Oz books, partly because his readers demanded them, along with dozens of other books for children, many under pseudonyms.

Baum moved to Hollywood in 1910 and attempted, without lasting success, to turn his stories into films through his own production company. He died in Hollywood in 1919, and the Oz series was continued by other writers for decades after his death.

Literary significance

Baum is generally credited with writing the first great American fairy tale. He set out deliberately to create fantasy for American children that did not depend on European folklore or on the moral lessons that older children’s books carried, and the Oz books, with their practical heroines, invented creatures, and small self-governing communities, became a model for later American children’s fantasy. His plain style and short chapters have kept the first Oz book readable for young children for more than a century, and the 1939 film adaptation made its story one of the most widely known in American culture.

Where to start

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the first book in the series and stands alone. It is also the only Oz book most readers need.