Many of Baum's short story titles sound quite familiar and are worth reading to explore a different side of Baum's familiar characters, all published in 1913:īecause of his lifelong love of theatre, Baum financed elaborate musicals throughout his career, leading to significant debts that required him to sell the royalties for many of his earlier works. The political commentary in Baum's work has been extensively analyzed. Baum's version of Oz, where characters like the scarecrow and tin woodman can be morbid and violent, is quite a contrast to the more tempered and idyllic characters featured in the world renowned movie and spin-off productions. Baum married and moved with his wife to the Dakota Territory in 1888, clearly having witnessed plenty of twisters to inspire the setting of his most famous works.

He was able to quit his door-to-door sales job because of its moderate success. He raised Hamburg chickens, established a trade journal, The Poultry Record and wrote a book, the complete history and guide for raising Hamburg chickens.īaum published his first book, Mother Goose in Prose in 1897, a collection of Mother Goose rhymes written as prose stories, in which he modernized the characters. His father bought him a cheap printing press with which he and his brothers published and sold issues of their own home journal which included advertising, At the age of 20, Baum became a breeder of fancy poultry, a national craze at the time. Baum was sent to the Peekskill Military Academy when we was 12 years old, in an attempt to curb his daydreaming, sickly ways.īaum established an early interest in writing and was fascinated by printing. Born in Chittenango, New York in 1856, his father was a wealthy Pennsylvania oil fields owner. Frank Baum, an American author best known for writing The Wizard of Oz (1900), wrote 55 other novels, 83 short stories, and over 200 poems.

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett.

The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane.

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne.

L.frank baum complete oz series