The World’s Fair contained a spectacular exhibit area, known as the White City. His first book in the new style, Adventures in Phunnyland, had to wait seven years before finding a publisher. At night, when his family was asleep, Baum would retire to his study and began writing in longhand.

At long last, Baum, on the advice of his mother-in-law, began putting his stories into words. Not only did he entertain his family his stories always found an audience among neighborhood children. It was a time of great optimism and the city’s energy fueled Baum’s always-fertile imagination.īaum, as noted, was also a born storyteller. The fair was an enormous success, attracting visitors from around the world as exhibitors showed off their latest inventions. The family arrived in the Windy City in 1893, the same year that Chicago hosted the World’s Fair. There, Baum continued his newspaper work. Restless as always, Baum moved his family again, this time to Chicago. He also became the editor of the local newspaper. He moved his family to South Dakota, where he opened a general store. Over the years, Baum worked as a salesman, a newspaper editor and a storefront designer, while publishing books on breeding chickens and window decorating that didn’t sell. Baum, in time, would be in line for a handsome inheritance, which probably explained his reckless behavior. He couldn’t stop trying new business schemes as well. Baum and his wife, Maud, would eventually become the parents of four boys. The young Baum began writing and publishing his own newspaper he also formed his own theater company. (Published on page xvi of The Annotated Wizard of Oz )Īt age 14, his father bought him a printing press. He was about 12 years old in this 1868 photograph. Frank Baum (1856-1919) served for two years as a cadet at the Peekskill Military School.

He read through the works of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. His parents hired tutors from England as the young man’s teachers. Baum benefited from his comfortable upbringing.

The heir to a wealthy Upstate New York family, he was born in 1856 on an estate near Syracuse. Frank Baum, a born storyteller who finally realized that putting those stories down on paper might hold handsome dividends.īaum traveled a long and curious road to fame and fortune. The film launched the career of the young Judy Garland, but the book, first published in 1900, marked the end of a long apprenticeship for its author, L. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” That line from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz is one of the most famous in the history of the movies, right up there with “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse,” “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” and “May the force be with you.”īefore the movie, came the book. Frank Baum circa 1911 (Los Angeles Times photographic archive, UCLA Library)

The wizard of oz frank l baum