Lyman Frank Baum

by Aisha Gilani

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Baum was one of several children. He was born on May 15, 1856 in Chiftenago, New York. Shortly after his birth his family moved to the outskirts of Syracuse. Baum's parents were wealthy. His father made his fortune in the Pennsylvania's oil fields. During Baum's 20s, he was an actor, a playwright and managed several theatres owned by his father. Baum's wealthy family helped him indulge in his many career pursuits after leaving military school. He had a happy childhood, but for a long time he was not much of a success at anything. He tried acting, selling machine oil and crockery, managing a department store, and newspaper editing and reporting, but nothing seemed to work well for him, or hold his interest for long. Stability finally entered Baum's life with his marriage in 1882 to the suffragette Maude Gage. After Baum wrote his first two children's books, he teamed up with an old acquaintance named William Wallace Denslow who was a newspaper cartoonist and poster designer. Together they created a book called Father Goose. By 1901, 60,000 copies of this book had been sold. The next joint venture of Baum and Denslow was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. After the major success of this book Baum turned the fairy tale into an Oz series.

Following is a quote from Baum, when he was asked about how he came up with the story of Wizard of Oz:
"I was sitting on the hat rack in the hall telling the kids a story, and suddenly this (story) moved right in and took possession. I shooed the children away and grabbed a piece of wrapping paper that was lying on the rack, and began to write. It really seemed to write itself."

Some of his books were The City of Oz, The Great City of the Great Oz., The Emerald City, From Kansas to Fairyland, The Fairyland of Oz., The Land of Oz. These varieties of names of Baum's books reflect the indecisiveness that was a characteristic of L. Frank Baum's life, as stated earlier. In 1905, people could not get enough of Oz and a small newspaper called The Ozmapolitan was issued. Baum became known as the "Royal Historian of Oz" until his death when Ruth Plumly Thompson was chosen to take on this title and continue the tradition.

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