L. Frank Baum


American journalist and writer, whose best-known book is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Baum's stories about the imaginary Land of Oz belong to the classics of fantasy literature. The Oz series was long shunned by librarians, and neglected by scholars of children's literature. Baum has often been compared to Lewis Carroll - they both had a girl as the protagonist in their most famous works, but Baum's Dorothy is a sugarized version of the sceptic and cynical Alice.

Lyman Frank Baum was born in Chittenango, New York. His father was the oil magnate Benjamin Ward Baum and mother Cynthia (Stanton) Baum, a women's rights activist. Baum grew up with his seven brothers and sisters on a large estate just north of Syracuse. "The cool but sun-kissed mansion . . . was built in a quaint yet pretty fashion, with many wings and gables and broad verandas on every side," Baum later wrote in Dot and Tot in Fairyland (1901). The house, although it was large, did not have running water.

Until the age of twelve, Baum was privately tutored at home. In the late 1860s, he spent two years at Peekskill Military Academy, where he learned to loathe the rigid discipline. In 1873 Baum became a reporter on the New York World. Two years later he founded the New Era weekly in Pennsylvania. He was a poultry farmer with B.W. Baum and Son, and edited Poultry Record and wrote columns for New York Farmer and Dairyman. Baum's father owned a string of theatres and Baum left journalism to earn his living as an actor.

In New York he acted as George Brooks with May Roberts and the Sterling Comedy in plays which he had written. He owned an opera house in 1882-83, and toured with his own repertory company. In 1882 he married Maud Gage; they had four sons.
Baum returned in 1883 to Syracuse to the family oil business and worked as a salesman in Baum's Ever-Ready Castorine axle grease. His own endeavor was not successful - Baum's Bazaar general store failed in South Dakota, and the family's fortunes took a downturn. From 1888 to 1890 he ran the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. He moved to Chicago, and tried sales positions. In 1897 he founded National Association of Window Trimmers and edited Show Window from 1897 to 1902.

Baum made his debut as a novelist with Mother Goose in Prose (1897), based on stories told to his own children. Its last chapter introduced the farm-girl Dorothy. In the preface Baum wrote that he wanted to create modern fairy tales, and not scare children like the Brothers Grimm did. "Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident."

Over the next 19 years Baum produced 62 books, most of them for children. In 1899 appeared Father Goose: His Book, which quickly became a best-seller. Baum's next work was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a story of little Dorothy from Kansas, who is transported with her dog Toto by a "twister" to a magical realm.