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L. Frank Baum Facts

L. Frank Baum Facts
L. Frank Baum was an American author best known for his children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He was born Lyman Frank Baum, a wealthy businessman, on May 15th, 1856 in Chittenango, New York, to Cynthia Ann Baum and Benjamin Ward Baum. He was their seventh child of nine, and only five of them survived to adulthood. Frank was tutored at home until he was 12, at which time he attended Peekskill Military Academy for two years. It was believed that sever discipline at school for daydreaming caused a psychogenic heart attack and he returned to his home. Frank's father bought him a printing press when his desire to write became clear and Frank and his brother Clay began publishing The Rose Home Journal.
Interesting L. Frank Baum Facts:
By the time Frank Baum was 17, he had begun publishing his second journal called The Stamp Collector, and started operating a stamp dealership with his friends.
After establishing a poultry breeding hobby when he was 20, Frank Baum started a new trade journal called The Poultry Record.
When Frank was 30 his first book was published titled The Book of Hamburgs: A Brief Treatise upon the Mating, Rearing, and Management of the Different Variety of Hamburgs.
In 1882 Frank Baum married Maud Gage. At the time he was writing plays and acting in some of them in a theatre that his father had built for him in New York.
While on tour with one of his plays titled The Maid of Arran, his own theatre burnt to the ground. All of his scripts were burned.
Frank and his wife moved to Dakota Territory in 1888 and he opened a store. It went bankrupt after he gave people too much credit. He began editing a local newspaper until 1891.
Frank, his wife, and their four sons moved to Chicago in 1891 and he began reporting for the Evening Post and worked as a traveling salesman.
L. Frank Baum wrote Mother Goose in Prose in 1897. It was successful enough that he was able to quit working. His next book Father Goose, His Book, published in 1899 became that year's bestselling children's book.
L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 and it became a huge success. It remained the bestselling children's book for two years in a row.
L. Frank Baum wrote many more books from the characters in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz including The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), Queen Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz (1905), The Woggle-Bug Book (1905), Ozma of Oz (1907), Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz (1908), The Road to Oz (1909), The Emerald City of Oz (1910), The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913), Little Wizard Stories of Oz (1913), Tik-Tok of Oz (1914), The Scarecrow of Oz (1915), Rinkitink in Oz (1916), The Lost Princess of Oz (1917), The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918), and several more published after his death.
L. Frank Baum published several non-Oz books, short stories, and plays under his own name and under pennames.
L. Frank Baum died on May 6th, 1919 at the age of 62 in Hollywood, Los Angeles following a stroke.
The movie The Wizard of Oz was made and released in 1939. It became one of the most famous and beloved children's movies of all time.


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