The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Baum, L. Frank
(Lyman Frank Baum) (bôm) (KEY) , 1856–1919, American journalist, playwright, and author of children’s stories, b. Chittenango, N.Y. He and his family moved to South Dakota in 1888, where he ran a newspaper, and to Chicago in 1891, where he worked as a journalist. His first children’s book, Mother Goose in Prose (1897), was followed by Father Goose: His Book (1899), which was an immediate bestseller. In 1900 he published his most famous work, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a story about a little girl carried by a tornado to the magical land of Oz. Baum’s dramatization of the book was produced in 1902; the story was also made into an extraordinarily popular motion picture in 1938. Although he wrote more than 70 children’s books, Baum’s fame rests largely on The Wizard and his 13 other stories of Oz, including Ozma of Oz (1907) and The Scarecrow of Oz (1915), all of which emphasize such American virtues as practicality, self-reliance, tolerance, and egalitarianism.
