Lyman Frank Baum was an American author, actor, and independent filmmaker best known as the creator, along with illustrator W. W. Denslow, of one of the most popular books in American children's literature, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, better known today as simply The Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a plethora of other works (55 novels in total, 82 short stories, over 200 poems, an unknown number of scripts, and many miscellaneous writings), and made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen.
Frank Baum—former chicken rancher, traveling salesman, and theater manager—had already published two successful children’s books when he started The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1898. He finished the book in October 1899. He must have been proud of his work, for he framed the pencil stub and hung it on the wall of his study. On the attached paper he scrawled, “With this pencil I wrote the manuscript of The Emerald City.”
At first, Baum had trouble coming up with a name for the magical land Dorothy visits. Then one day he found himself looking at the filing cabinet in his study. There were three drawers marked “A to G,” “H to N,” and “O to Z.” And so Oz was born.
Dorothy Gale is based on Dorothy Gage, the infant niece of Baum’s wife, Maud. She died in November 1898, right as Baum was writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The character Dorothy was Baum’s tribute to the lost baby girl.
Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Chicago. He’d been to Kansas only once when he and Maud were touring with his melodrama "The Maid of Arran." He may have picked Kansas because of the tornado that sweeps Dorothy away. In 1893, a cyclone ripped through the state, killing 31 people and destroying two towns. The writer Gore Vidal suggested this disaster may have inspired the setting of Baum’s book.
Throughout the book, Dorothy follows a yellow brick road, which runs straight through the story. Periodically she goes off the road, has an adventure, then returns and continues her journey. Along the way, she meets a host of almost-forgotten characters, such as the Queen of the Field Mice, people made out of china, and the Kalidahs—creatures with the bodies of bears and the heads of tigers.
In the book, Dorothy is given “silver shoes with pointed toes.” The color was changed for the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland because the filmmakers thought that ruby red looked better in Technicolor.
When the first print of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz came off the press in May 1900, Baum was there to compile the pages. He then gave the book to his sister, Mary Louise Baum Brewster, writing on the manuscript, “This ‘dummy was made from sheets I gathered from the press as fast as printed and bound up by hand. It is really the very first book ever made of this story.”
Full distribution began in August. According to the publisher, the first printing of 10,000 copies sold out in two weeks, followed by a second printing of 15,000 and a third printing of 10,000. In November, there was a fourth printing of 30,000 and in January, a fifth printing of 25,000. That’s 90,000 books in the first six months. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz remained a bestseller for two years.
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