[Peace-discuss] L. Frank Baum

[David Green]

It's the birthday of the man who wrote The Wizard of
Oz, Lyman Frank Baum, born in Chittenango, New York in
1856. His father was a rich oil tycoon, and the family
lived at an idyllic country home in upstate New York.
He was a shy and studious child. Frank had a heart
condition his entire life and was never able to exert
himself physically. He had a heart attack at school
and returned home, where he turned his creativity
toward writing and publishing. When he was fifteen
years old his father bought him a small printing press
for his birthday, and he and his brother Harry started
a newspaper called The Rose Lawn Home Journal. His
first book was published in 1886 and was called The
Book of Hamburgs, A Brief Treatise upon the Mating,
Rearing, and Management of Different Varieties of
Hamburgs. He wrote a couple of plays and toured around
the country before settling down in Aberdeen, South
Dakota. He ran a general store that he called "Baum's
Bazaar," where, with a cigar constantly dangling from
his mouth, he liked to entertain children by telling
them fairy tales and giving them candy as they
gathered around on the dusty, wooden sidewalk. In
1897, he published his collection of Mother Goose
stories, Mother Goose in Prose. Two years later he met
the illustrator William Denslow, and the pair
published Father Goose, His Book (1899), a huge
success. In 1900, Baum wrote the book that made him
famous, The Wizard of Oz, illustrated by Denslow. The
book began as a story he told to some neighborhood
children; Frank thought it was so good that he stopped
in the middle of the story to go start writing it
down. The story of Dorothy, her dog Toto, the
Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Man, and their
journey down the yellow brick road, was an instant
classic. Baum was a socialist, and The Emerald City of
Oz was his socialist utopia. He wrote, "There were no
poor people in the land of Oz, because there was no
such thing as money, and all property of every sort
belonged to the Ruler. Each person was given freely by
his neighbours whatever he required for his use, which
is as much as anyone may reasonably desire. Every one
worked half the time and played half the time, and the
people enjoyed the work as much as they did the play,
because it is good to be occupied and to have
something to do."



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