L. Frank Baum

Lyman Frank Baum was born into a wealthy New York family in 1856. He started writing at an early age, and one of his earliest passions was the theatre. Baum wrote and acted in several plays, often using stage names, but with limited financial success. He married his wife, Maud Gage, in 1882, and the two of them moved to South Dakota in 1888. While Baum’s life as a newspaper editor there was fairly uneventful, he later admitted that his time in South Dakota inspired his depiction of Kansas in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In 1891, he moved to Chicago with his wife and children, writing for a new publication and focusing on advertising and sales. While his first attempt as a children’s author was his book Mother Goose in Prose, he wouldn’t find significant success until the publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Oz quickly became a classic, and it wasn’t long before Baum began to work on sequels and even a stage adaptation. While his Oz series was a great success, he continued to struggle financially as he funded many extravagant theatrical productions. Baum died of a stroke in 1919, and his final Oz book was published posthumously one year later.