L. Frank Baum never seemed to run out of ideas. Throughout his life, he pursued a variety of whims and ventures as a writer, printer, poultry breeder, store owner, theater enthusiast, salesman and reporter. In the end, however, it culminated in his near-financial ruin. To the grounded individual, this rootless behavior possibly revealed a lack of maturity. But perhaps it took a man like Baum who followed his imagination and indulged in the art of chasing rainbows to write a book like The Wonderful Wizard of OZ in 1900.

Born in Chittenango, New York, the son of Cynthia and Benjamin Ward, a wealthy businessman who struck oil in Pennsylvania, Baum's imagination traveled far and wide on his parents' paradisiacal estate, "Rose Lawn." Due to a heart condition, his parents forbade the sort of rough play typical of boys, so the young Baum, who preferred to go by "Frank" instead of his given name, "Lyman," turned to books-especially those by Dickens-for amusement. After his education-home tutoring and an unhappy 2 years at Peekskill Military Academy-Baum's father bought him a small printing press. Baum and his younger brother, Harry Clay, produced 2 amateur journals (The Rose Lawn Home Journal and The Stamp Collector) and a pamphlet on stamp dealers. After being swindled in a theater scam and working in a dry goods store, Baum turned to poultry breeding, which was very popular at that time in the US, and published his first book in 1886, "The Book of the Hamburgs: A Brief Treatise upon the Mating, Rearing, and Management of the Different Varieties of Hamburgs." Though he had continued to write plays and perform on the stage, he moved to South Dakota (which provided the setting Baum used for Kansas in The Wonderful Wizard of OZ) after his marriage to Maud Gage. When his store went bankrupt and his newspaper failed, the family moved to Chicago in 1891, where Baum became a reporter for The Evening Post and a door-to-door china salesman.

Near the turn of the century, Baum published Mother Goose in Prose (1897) and Father Goose: His Book (1899), which became the best-selling children's book of the year and, finally, The Wonderful Wizard of OZ (1900), a best-selling children's book for two years in a row. After its success, Baum authored 13 more novels based on the land of OZ at requests from fans and produced a stage musical version of the book for adult audiences that ran on Broadway from 1902-1911. Unfortunately, this was the last success Baum would enjoy. After publishing a series of fantasy fiction books and financing unsuccessful stage musicals, Baum was forced to sell the rights to many of his books, including The Wonderful Wizard of OZ, to pay off his debts. He died from a stroke on May 6, 1919. His last novel, Glinda of OZ, was published posthumously in 1920. In his lifetime career, he had published over 60 children's books, numerous volumes of poetry, plays and short stories.     

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Articles About Baum, L. Frank

The Man Behind the Curtain: L. Frank Baum and the Wizard of Oz	November 27, 2007
Chances are you have seen the 1939 MGM movie, The Wizard of Oz, at one point or another in your lifetime. But the chances maybe even greater that you do not associate it with L. Frank Baum, the author of the book on which the film was based. In fact, most people have probably never heard of him at all unless they have read his work or were born around the time when he was popular.