Thursday, May 15, 1856, was the day the author of children's books,
Lyman Frank Baum was born. He wrote
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz series; in addition to the 14
Oz books, Baum penned 41 other novels (not
including four lost, unpublished novels), 83 short stories, over 200
poems, and at least 42 scripts. He made numerous attempts to bring his
works to the stage and screen.
The book was written in 1900 with the following introduction:
Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the
ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for
stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm
and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other
human creations.
Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed
as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has
come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped
genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and
blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to
each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks
only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all
disagreeable incident.
Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz” was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a
modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the
heartaches and nightmares are left out.
L. Frank Baum
Chicago, April, 1900.
A free eBook version is available at the
Gutenberg Project with all twenty-four chapters linked individually (
link below).
The fantasy tale was made into a film in 1939 and starred
Judy Garland with an amazing cast of actors but I didn't see it until the 1949 re-release of the film. I was a little
kid and had seen the ads about the "Glorious" color of the film. I
remember being very excited about going to see the film then
watching it start and being bitterly disappointed that it
was in
sepia not color. I felt cheated; that's what had been promised!!!!! (
link below) Interesting that even as a kid I was aware of color quality!
Baum was born and raised in
Chittenango, New York. He started writing early in life, possibly prompted by his father buying him a cheap
printing press. His younger brother Henry (Harry) Clay Baum, helped him in the production of
The Rose Lawn Home Journal.
The brothers published several issues of the journal, including
advertisements from local businesses, which they gave to family and
friends for free. By the age of 17, Baum established a second amateur journal called
The Stamp Collector, printed an 11-page pamphlet called
Baum's Complete Stamp Dealers' Directory, co-written by Henry Clay Baum and William Norris, and started a
stamp dealership with friends.
When he was 20, Baum took on the national craze of breeding poultry. He specialized in raising the
Hamburg chicken, a Dutch
breed. In March 1880, he established a monthly trade journal,
The Poultry Record and, in 1886, when Baum was 30 years old, 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 moved west after an unsuccessful stint as a theater producer and playwright. He and his wife opened a store in
Aberdeen, South Dakota,
and he edited and published a newspaper called
The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. They then moved to
Chicago,
Illinois, where he worked as a newspaper
reporter and published children's literature, coming out with the first
Oz book in 1900. While continuing his writing, among his final projects he sought to establish a
film studio in Los Angeles, California.
In 1897, he wrote and published
Mother Goose in Prose, a collection of
Mother Goose rhymes written as prose stories and illustrated by
Maxfield Parrish.
Mother Goose
was a moderate success and allowed Baum to quit his sales job (which
had had a negative impact on his health). In 1899, Baum partnered with
illustrator
W. W. Denslow to publish
Father Goose, His Book, a collection of nonsense poetry. The book was a success, becoming the best-selling children's book of the year.
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