The Gossamer Beacon Volume 1 The Wizard of OZ | Page 9

Lyman Frank Baum was born in 1856 in Chittenango, NY. From a young age, Frank enjoyed writing, later becoming devoted to theater as well. As children, he and his brother Henry produced their own paper, naming it after their home, Rose Lawn. Later, Frank printed a magazine called The Stamp Collector, and accompanied it with a directory of stamp dealers.

As he grew up, Frank worked in many jobs, including selling fireworks, owning a general store, and editing a newspaper. He also managed an opera house, wrote several plays and acted in them, and later started a film studio, wrote a number of screenplays, and directed two films before his studio closed.

Frank, his wife, Maude, and their children, moved to what was then the Dakota Territory (now Aberdeen, SD) in 1888; in 1891, the Baum’s and their four sons moved to Chicago, IL. Two years later, in 1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, was held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World. It celebrated the fine arts and featured many new technologies and farming methods, all of which were housed in nearly 200 buildings that were painted bright white. This made them almost shine against the rest of Chicago, and earned the Fair the nickname of “The White City.” The whole World’s Fair was so big and so beautiful that it left a lasting impression on Frank and later inspired his vision of the Emerald City of Oz.

While living in Chicago, Frank began writing books for children. As a child, Frank had loved reading but disliked the more frightening elements of popular fairytales such as those by Hans Christian Andersen or the Grimm brothers. Instead, he would retell or adapt the tales to make them more delightful and less scary, and as a father, enjoyed telling these adaptations to his children. With encouragement from his mother-in-law, he began to write them down. His first children’s book, published in 1897, was Mother Goose in Prose, a collection of nursery rhymes with stories written out to expand on them. This was followed two years later by Father Goose: His Book, a collection of original nonsense poems.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published the next year in 1900. It was a huge success and was the best-selling children’s book for two years. In writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Frank had wanted to create an American fairytale, drawing on the wonder of Andersen and the Grimm brothers but leaving behind any horrors He filled his book with things that would be familiar to his readers – cornfields, scarecrows and tornados – and added the magic of witches and wizards. His heroine, Dorothy, was also easy for readers to relate to, being a child very much like themselves. (continued on page 10 )