Lyman Frank Baum ( / b ɔː m / ; May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American writer most famous for his children’s fantasy books, especially The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which is part of a series. In addition to the 14 Oz books, Baum wrote 41 other novels (not counting four lost, unpublished ones), 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts. He tried many times to turn his stories into plays and movies; the 1939 film version of the first Oz book became an important film in the 20th century.

Baum was born and raised in Chittenango, New York. After a failed attempt to work in theater, he moved west. He and his wife opened a store in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and he edited and published a newspaper called The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. Later, they moved to Chicago, where he worked as a newspaper reporter and wrote children’s books. He published the first Oz book in 1900. While continuing to write, he also worked on creating a film studio in Los Angeles, California, near the end of his life.

His stories included ideas that later became common, such as television, advanced technology, computers (The Master Key), wireless telephones (Tik-Tok of Oz), women working in dangerous or action-filled jobs (Mary Louise in the Country), and ads appearing on clothing (Aunt Jane’s Nieces at Work).

Childhood and early life

L. Frank Baum was born in Chittenango, New York, in 1856 to a very religious Methodist family. His ancestors included people from Germany, Scotland, Ireland, and England. He was the seventh of nine children born to Cynthia Ann (née Stanton) and Benjamin Ward Baum. Only five of the children lived to be adults. His father’s brother was named Lyman Spaulding Baum, but Frank preferred his middle name, "Frank."

Baum’s father owned several businesses, such as making barrels, drilling for oil in Pennsylvania, and buying and selling land. Baum grew up on his family’s large estate called Rose Lawn, which he remembered as a happy place. Rose Lawn was located in Mattydale, New York. As a child, Baum was often sick and spent much time daydreaming. He was taught at home by his parents and siblings. At age 12, he attended Peekskill Military Academy for two years. After being punished for daydreaming, he experienced a possible heart attack caused by stress and returned home.

Baum began writing early in life, possibly because his father gave him a simple printing press. He was close to his younger brother, Henry (Harry) Clay Baum, who helped create The Rose Lawn Home Journal. The brothers published several issues of the journal, including ads from local businesses, and shared them with family and friends for free. By age 17, Baum started another journal called The Stamp Collector. He also printed an 11-page pamphlet titled Baum’s Complete Stamp Dealers’ Directory, written with his brother and a friend named William Norris. He also began selling stamps with friends.

At age 20, Baum joined the popular trend of raising chickens. He focused on breeding a type called Hamburg chickens. In March 1880, he started a monthly magazine called The Poultry Record. In 1886, when Baum was 30, his first book was published: The Book of the Hamburgs: A Brief Treatise upon the Mating, Rearing, and Management of the Different Varieties of Hamburgs.

Baum enjoyed being the center of attention during family events, even during hard times. He sold fireworks for the Fourth of July, creating exciting displays with skyrockets and Roman candles that drew neighbors to watch. For Christmas, he dressed as Santa Claus. His father would hide the Christmas tree behind a curtain in the front room so Baum could talk to guests while decorating the tree without being seen. He kept this tradition throughout his life.

Career

L. Frank Baum began his lifelong passion for theater, though his financial success was uneven. A local theater company tricked him into restocking their costumes in exchange for promises of leading roles. Feeling disappointed, Baum left the theater for a time and worked as a clerk in his brother-in-law’s dry goods company in Syracuse. This experience may have influenced his story "The Suicide of Kiaros," first published in the literary journal The White Elephant. A fellow clerk was later found locked in a store room and was likely dead from suicide.

Baum could not stay away from the stage for long. He performed in plays using the stage names Louis F. Baum and George Brooks. In 1880, his father built him a theater in Richburg, New York, and Baum began writing plays and gathering actors. The Maid of Arran had some success as a melodrama with songs based on William Black’s novel A Princess of Thule. Baum wrote the play, composed the songs, and acted in the lead role. His aunt Katharine Gray, who founded the Syracuse Oratory School, played the character’s aunt. Baum advertised his theater teaching services in her school catalog, including stage work, playwriting, directing, and translating.

On November 9, 1882, Baum married Maud Gage, the daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a well-known women’s rights activist. A local newspaper described their wedding as "one of equality" with vows that were "precisely the same." While touring with The Maid of Arran, the theater in Richburg burned down during a performance of Baum’s play Matches, destroying the theater and many of his scripts.

In July 1888, Baum and his wife moved to Aberdeen, Dakota Territory, where he opened a store called "Baum’s Bazaar." His habit of offering goods on credit led to the store’s failure. He then worked as an editor for the local newspaper The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, writing a column called Our Landlady. In a December 1890 column, Baum suggested the wholesale extermination of Native Americans after the death of Sitting Bull. It is unclear if this was meant as satire, especially since Baum’s mother-in-law, Matilda Joslyn Gage, was a strong advocate for Native American rights. In January 1891, Baum again wrote about the Wounded Knee Massacre in an editorial.

Baum’s description of Kansas in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was inspired by his experiences in drought-stricken South Dakota. During this time, his mother-in-law lived with the Baum family. While in South Dakota, Baum sang in a quartet with James Kyle, who later became one of the first Populist (People’s Party) senators in the U.S.

Baum’s newspaper failed in 1891, and he, Maud, and their four sons moved to Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, where Baum worked as a reporter for the Evening Post.

Starting in 1897, Baum founded and edited a magazine called The Show Window, which later became The Merchants Record and Show Window. The magazine focused on store displays, retail strategies, and visual merchandising. Department stores used clockwork mechanisms to create moving displays during the holidays. The magazine is still in operation today as VMSD (visual merchandising + store design), based in Cincinnati.

In 1900, Baum published a book about window displays, emphasizing the importance of mannequins in attracting customers. He also worked as a traveling salesman.

In 1897, Baum wrote and published Mother Goose in Prose, a collection of Mother Goose rhymes rewritten as prose stories and illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. The book had moderate success, allowing Baum to leave his sales job, which had harmed his health. In 1899, he partnered with illustrator W. W. Denslow to publish Father Goose, His Book, a collection of nonsense poetry. The book became the best-selling children’s book of the year.

In 1900, Baum and Denslow (who shared the copyright) published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which received critical acclaim and financial success. The book was the best-selling children’s book for two years after its release. Baum later wrote thirteen more novels set in the Land of Oz.

Two years after the book’s publication, Baum and Denslow collaborated with composer Paul Tietjens and director Julian Mitchell to create a stage version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for Fred R. Hamlin. A previous musical version of the book was rejected in 1901. The stage version opened in Chicago in 1902 (using the shortened title The Wizard of Oz) and ran on Broadway for 293 nights from January to October 1903. It returned to Broadway in 1904 and toured the U.S. until 1911. The stage version starred Anna Laughlin as Dorothy Gale, with David C. Montgomery and Fred Stone as the Tin Woodman and Scarecrow, who gained fame from the role.

The stage version was very different from the book, focusing more on

Later life and work

After the success of The Wizard of Oz in books and on stage, Baum and Denslow hoped for more success and published Dot and Tot of Merryland in 1901. The book was one of Baum’s least successful, and its failure made their already difficult relationship worse. It was their final collaboration. Beginning in 1904, Baum worked mostly with John R. Neill on his fantasy stories. However, Baum and Neill met only a few times (all before Neill moved to California), and Baum often disliked Neill’s artwork because it was not funny enough. He was especially upset when Neill published The Oz Toy Book: Cut-outs for the Kiddies without Baum’s permission.

Baum is said to have designed the chandeliers in the Crown Room of the Hotel del Coronado, but this claim has not been proven. During the development of the Oz series, Baum several times said he would write no more Oz books and focus on other fantasy stories, such as The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and Queen Zixi of Ix. However, he always returned to the Oz series because of popular demand, letters from children, and the failure of his new books. Even so, his other works remained popular after his death, with The Master Key appearing on St. Nicholas Magazine’s list of favorite books well into the 1920s.

In 1905, Baum announced plans for an Oz amusement park. In an interview, he said he had bought “Pedloe Island” off the coast of California to turn it into an Oz park. However, there is no proof he purchased such an island, and no island with a similar name has ever been found in that area. Baum told the press he had discovered and bought Pedloe Island to create “the Marvelous Land of Oz,” a fairy paradise for children. Eleven-year-old Dorothy Talbot of San Francisco was reported to become queen on March 1, 1906, when the Palace of Oz was expected to open. Baum planned to live on the island, with the princess and her child advisers managing daily tasks. Plans included statues of the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Jack Pumpkinhead, and H.M. Woggle-Bug, T.E. Baum abandoned the park project after the failure of The Woggle-Bug, which was playing at the Garrick Theatre in 1905.

Because he loved theatre his whole life, Baum funded expensive musicals, often causing financial problems. One of his biggest financial issues was The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908), which combined a slideshow, film, live actors, and a lecture by Baum as if he were giving a travelogue to Oz. However, Baum could not pay his debts to the film company. He did not regain financial stability for several years after selling the rights to many of his earlier works, including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This allowed the M.A. Donahue Company to publish cheap editions of his books with ads claiming his newer works were worse than the cheaper books they sold. Baum declared bankruptcy in August 1911. However, he had transferred most of his property to his wife, Maud, except for his clothes, typewriter, and library (mostly children’s books, including fairy tales by Andrew Lang, whose portrait he kept in his study). He argued these items were necessary for his work. Maud managed the finances, so Baum lost much less than he could have.

Baum used several pseudonyms for his non-Oz books. These include:

• Edith Van Dyne (Aunt Jane’s Nieces series)
• Laura Bancroft (The Twinkle Tales, Policeman Bluejay)
• Floyd Akers (The Boy Fortune Hunters series, continuing the Sam Steele series)
• Suzanne Metcalf (Annabel)
• Schuyler Staunton (The Fate of a Crown, Daughters of Destiny)
• John Estes Cooke (Tamawaca Folks)
• Capt. Hugh Fitzgerald (Sam Steele series)

Baum also anonymously wrote The Last Egyptian: A Romance of the Nile. He continued working in theatre with Harry Marston Haldeman’s men’s group, The Uplifters, writing plays for celebrations and parodic bylaws. The group included Will Rogers and honored Baum by reviving his works after his death. Many of these plays are known, but only The Uplift of Lucifer is known to survive (it was published in a limited edition in the 1960s). Before that, his last produced play was The Tik-Tok Man of Oz (based on Ozma of Oz and the basis for Tik-Tok of Oz), a modest success in Hollywood. Producer Oliver Morosco decided not to take it to Broadway. Morosco later shifted to film production, as did Baum.

In 1914, Baum started his own film company, The Oz Film Manufacturing Company, which grew out of The Uplifters. He served as its president and principal producer and screenwriter. The board included Louis F. Gottschalk, Harry Marston Haldeman, and Clarence R. Rundel. The films were directed by J. Farrell MacDonald, with casts that included Violet MacMillan, Vivian Reed, Mildred Harris, Juanita Hansen, Pierre Couderc, Mai Welles, Louise Emmons, J. Charles Haydon, and early appearances by Harold Lloyd and Hal Roach. Silent film actor Richard Rosson appeared in one film (his younger brother, Harold Rosson, was the cinematographer for The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939). After little success in the children’s film market, Baum admitted he wrote The Last Egyptian and made a film of it (parts of which are in Decasia). However, the Oz name was not popular with audiences at the time, and even changing the company’s name to Dramatic Feature Films and transferring ownership to Frank Joslyn Baum did not help. Baum did not invest his own money in the venture, unlike The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, but the stress likely affected his health.

Personal life and death

On May 5, 1919, Baum had a stroke, fell into a coma, and died the next day, nine days before his 63rd birthday. His last words were to his wife during a time when he was thinking clearly: "Now we can cross the Shifting Sands." He was buried in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.

His final Oz book, Glinda of Oz, was published on July 10, 1920, one year after his death. Other authors continued the Oz series after his death, especially Ruth Plumly Thompson, who wrote twenty-one more Oz books.

Baum's beliefs

In 1890, during the Ghost Dance movement and the Wounded Knee Massacre, L. Frank Baum wrote two editorials. He claimed that the safety of American settlers depended on the large-scale killing of Native Americans. These editorials were republished in 1990 by Robert Venables, a sociologist from Cornell University. Venables argued that Baum was not using sarcasm. Historian Camilla Townsend, editor of American Indian History: A Documentary Reader, said the editorial was "against character" because Baum had previously criticized the idea that White Americans feared Native Americans. Townsend noted she found no proof that Baum used sarcasm.

The first editorial was published on December 20, 1890, five days after the death of Lakota Sioux holy man Sitting Bull. It stated that with Sitting Bull’s death, the "nobility of the Redskin" had ended. Baum claimed the safety of the frontier would not be ensured until Native Americans were completely destroyed. He called them "miserable wretches" and said their extermination would "do justice to the manly characteristics" of their ancestors.

The Wounded Knee Massacre happened nine days later. The second editorial was published on January 3, 1891. Baum blamed General Nelson A. Miles for weak leadership, which led to a "terrible loss of blood" for soldiers in a battle that he called a disgrace to the Department of War. He argued the disaster could have been avoided with proper planning. Baum repeated his belief that Native American tribes needed to be eliminated to protect settlers. He ended the editorial with a quote: "An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that 'when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre.'"

In 2006, two of Baum’s descendants apologized to the Sioux nation for any harm caused by their ancestor.

The short story "The Enchanted Buffalo" claims to be a legend about a tribe of bison. It states that a key element of the story became part of Native American legends. Baum expressed dislike for a Hopi snake dance in Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John, but he also criticized the poor conditions on Native American reservations. In Aunt Jane's Nieces on the Ranch, he included a hard-working Mexican character to challenge stereotypes that portrayed Mexicans as lazy. Baum’s mother-in-law, Matilda Joslyn Gage, a leader in the women’s suffrage movement, influenced his views. Gage was accepted into the Iroquois Council of Matrons for her respect and support for Native Americans.

While living in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where he was secretary of the Equal Suffrage Club, Baum’s newspaper focused on persuading people to support women’s right to vote. Susan B. Anthony visited Aberdeen and stayed with the Baums. Nancy Tystad Koupal noted that Baum’s interest in writing editorials declined after Aberdeen failed to pass a women’s suffrage bill.

Sally Roesch Wagner of The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation wrote The Wonderful Mother of Oz, explaining how Gage’s feminist ideas influenced Baum’s Oz books. Some of Baum’s interactions with suffragists inspired The Marvelous Land of Oz, where General Jinjur leads a revolt of women and girls who force men to do household chores. Jinjur proves to be a poor ruler, and Princess Ozma, who supports gender equality, becomes queen. The Emerald City of Oz (1910) shares similarities with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1915 feminist novel Herland. Scholars believe Gage connected Baum and Gilman. Other stories by Baum, such as Aunt Jane's Nieces and The Bluebird Books, include feminist or equal treatment themes.

In the early 20th century, many political references to the "Wizard" appeared. In 1964, Henry Littlefield, a high school teacher, wrote an article suggesting The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a metaphor for 1890s politics, including debates over silver and gold. He also supported William McKinley with a poem. Since 1964, scholars have noted similarities between characters in the book and figures from editorial cartoons of the time. Littlefield later clarified his theory was not meant to accuse Baum but to highlight connections between Baum’s stories and turn-of-the-century America.

Baum’s newspaper covered political issues in the 1890s, and his illustrator, W.W. Denslow, was also an editorial cartoonist. Political references, such as mentions of the president, a powerful senator, and John D. Rockefeller, appeared in the 1902 stage version of the story. Fewer political references were found in later Oz books. When asked if his stories had hidden meanings, Baum always said they were written to "please children."

Baum’s goal with the Oz books and other fairy tales was to retell stories from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, update them with an American style, and remove stereotypes like dwarfs or genies. He also reduced the amount of violence in his stories over time. In The Emerald City of Oz, Ozma opposes using violence, even against enemies. This marked a shift toward making children’s stories less harsh, though he did not make many other changes.

Baum avoided romantic themes, believing they were uninteresting to children. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the only romantic elements were background details, such as the Tin Woodman’s love for Nimmie Amee and the enchantment of the winged monkeys. Later stories like The Scarecrow of Oz and Tik-Tok of Oz included similar elements but were based on plays, which Baum was cautious about until readers accepted them.

Baum was originally a Methodist but joined the Episcopal Church in Aberdeen to participate in community theater. Later, he and his wife became members of the Theosophical Society in 1892, influenced by Matilda Joslyn Gage. His beliefs often appeared in his writings. The only mention of a church in his Oz books is a porcelain church in The Dainty China Country, which the Cowardly Lion breaks.

Legacy and popular culture

• A 1970 episode of the long-running American Western anthology series Death Valley Days shows a very idealized version of Baum's time in South Dakota. The comedy, titled The Wizard of Aberdeen, features Conlan Carter as Baum and Beverlee McKinsey as Maud. While the 30-minute episode mentions Baum's family life and his challenges as a newspaper editor in Aberdeen, it mainly focuses on him telling stories to children about characters from a faraway land he first calls "Ooz."
• John Ritter played Baum in the television film The Dreamer of Oz: The L. Frank Baum Story (1990).
• Jeffrey Combs plays a greatly fictionalized version of L. Frank Baum, shown as a Kansas farmer in the 1890s, in a flashback part of the story in Dorothy and the Witches of Oz (2011).
• Zach Braff portrays Frank Baum, a co-owner of Oscar Diggs' circus in 1905, in Oz the Great and Powerful (2013). The character is named to honor the author, but it is not meant to represent the real person.
• In 2013, Baum was added to the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.