Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919), known as L. Frank Baum, was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen novel sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a host of other works (55 novels in total, plus four "lost" novels, 83 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. His works anticipated such century later commonplaces as television, augmented reality, laptop computers (The Master Key), wireless telephones (Tik-Tok of Oz), women in high risk, action-heavy occupations (Mary Louise in the Country), and the ubiquity of advertising on clothing (Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work). Baum was born in Chittenango, New York, in 1856, into a devout Methodist family. He had German, Scots-Irish, and English ancestry, and was the seventh of nine children of Cynthia Ann (née Stanton) and Benjamin Ward Baum, only five of whom survived into adulthood. He was named "Lyman" after his father's brother, but always disliked this name, and preferred to go by his middle name, "Frank".
Benjamin Baum was a wealthy businessman, a barrel maker who ultimately made a fortune in the Pennsylvania oil rush. Baum grew up on his parents' expansive estate, Rose Lawn, which he always remembered fondly as a sort of paradise.
As a young child, he was tutored at home with his siblings, but at the age of 12, he was sent to study at Peekskill Military Academy. He was a sickly child given to daydreaming, and his parents may have thought he needed toughening up. But after two utterly miserable years at the military academy, he was allowed to return home. Frank Joslyn Baum, in his biography, To Please a Child, claimed that this was following an incident described as a heart attack, though there is no contemporary evidence of this (and much evidence that material in Frank J.'s biography was fabricated).
Baum started writing at an early age, perhaps due to an early fascination with printing. His father bought him a cheap printing press; which, with the help of his younger brother Henry (Harry) Clay Baum, with whom he had always been close, he used to produce The Rose Lawn Home Journal. The brothers published several issues of the journal, which included advertisements, perhaps which they may have sold. Rose Lawn was located in Mattydale, New York. The house burned down in the 1950s, and is now the site of an abandoned skating rink. The only remains of Rose Lawn are a few concrete steps, located behind the building. By the time he was 17, Baum established a second amateur journal, The Stamp Collector, printed an 11 page pamphlet called Baum's Complete Stamp Dealers' Directory, and started a stamp dealership with friends.
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