L. Frank Baum
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Lyman Frank Baum (15 May 1856 – 6 May 1919) was an American writer of children's books during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is best known for his most famous and popular book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and other "Oz books" that followed it.
[change] Early life
Baum was born in a small town in upstate New York, a member of a large family. He started writing as a child; when his father bought his children a simple printing press, Baum and a younger brother wrote and printed a small local newspaper. As a young man, Baum wrote and staged plays; sometimes he wrote songs for his plays and starred in them himself. He tried many other careers too. He was a travelling salesman, and also a storekeeper for a time; he started a newspaper while he lived in a town in South Dakota. He married in 1882; he and his wife, Maud Gage Baum, raised four sons. He had a rich imagination, and enjoyed making up stories for his young sons and their friends.
[change] Writing career
When he turned 40 years old and was living in Chicago, Baum started writing children's books, that were often based on the stories he had told to children over many years. After several successes in the late 1890s, Baum published what he called an "American fairy tale," The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in 1900. The book had pictures drawn by the American artist W. W. Denslow. Baum had to pay for the first Oz book himself. No Chicago publisher wanted to publish The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; one man even told Baum that if there was a market for this kind of book, it would already have been written.
But the first Oz book was a big success. Baum was able to give up other business interests and earn his living writing children's books. The children who read his books often wrote to Baum, and asked him to write more about Oz. This inspired Baum to begin a series of books set in the fantasy land of Oz. In time Baum grew tired of the series, and tried to end it; but his child readers kept demanding that he continue. Baum met their demands through the rest of his life. He wrote 14 Oz books in all; the last two were printed after his death in 1919.
Baum also wrote a large number of books aside from the Oz series. He was proudest of his fantasies for children, but he also wrote many other kinds of popular works; he used many pen names for these works.
Baum's children's books were illustrated with pictures by different artists; after the first Oz book, all the rest in the series had pictures by John R. Neill.
[change] Later life
Baum made a good income from his books, and spent time travelling around the world with his wife. They settled in Hollywood in California, and Baum made movie versions of some of his Oz books, and produced stage versions of them too. But his businesses were not always successful, and in time Baum had to declare bankruptcy. He was smart enough to put his house in his wife's name, so that they did not lose their home, which they called "Ozcot," in the bankruptcy.
[change] Baum's Oz books
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900
- The Marvelous Land of Oz, 1904
- Ozma of Oz, 1907
- Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, 1908
- The Road to Oz, 1909
- The Emerald City of Oz, 1910
- The Patchwork Girl of Oz, 1913
- Tik-Tok of Oz, 1914
- The Scarecrow of Oz, 1915
- Rinkitink in Oz, 1916
- The Lost Princess of Oz, 1917
- The Tin Woodman of Oz, 1918
- The Magic of Oz, 1919
- Glinda of Oz, 1920
[change] Some other Baum fantasies
- The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, 1902
- The Enchanted Island of Yew, 1903
- Queen Zixi of Ix, 1905
- John Dough and the Cherub, 1906
- The Sea Fairies, 1912
- Sky Island, 1913
