L. Frank Baum.

At age 14, a heart attack induced by the rigors of Peekskill Military Academy left Baum with a lifelong aversion to militarism, which he later mocked in his Oz books. Lyman Frank Baum was born on May 15, 1856, in Chittenango, New York, to Cynthia Stanton and Benjamin Ward Baum. He grew up with a printing press and published an amateur newspaper, The Rose Lawn Home Journal. As a child he hand-set type for a private poetry collection, By the Candelabra’s Glare: Some Verse, without a manuscript.

Baum achieved his first success with the 1882 play The Maid of Arran. Despite this, he failed at numerous ventures: as a newspaper editor of The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, a store owner Baum’s Bazaar, bankrupt in 1899, and a traveling salesman. At age 41, he published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900, a fantasy that reshaped the genre. He wrote 13 sequels and many other series under pseudonyms such as Edith Van Dyne, Suzanne Metcalf, and Floyd Akers. In 1914 he founded the Oz Film Manufacturing Company and directed one film, but Oz was deemed box-office poison despite critical praise for The Patchwork Girl of Oz 1914. He continued writing from his sickbed, and his final Oz book appeared posthumously in 1920.

Baum married Maud Gage on November 9, 1882, and they had four sons: Frank Joslyn, Harry Neal, Robert Stanton, and Kenneth Gage. The family later moved to Hollywood at Ozcot to provide a quiet writing environment. Baum was a kind, gentle man who never swore or told dirty jokes, and he could not punish his sons—Maud handled discipline. He supported the women’s suffrage movement and designed chandeliers for the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego.

Baum’s work influenced writers such as Gore Vidal, Ray Bradbury, and Terry Brooks. The 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz opened to modest box office but later became a massive hit. In 1934, his son Frank Joslyn Baum sold the film rights to the first Oz book to MGM, and Walt Disney later acquired the rest. In August 2006, Baum’s descendants issued an official apology to Sioux tribes for his editorials justifying the Wounded Knee Massacre. He created Oz and wrote 14 books that defined American fantasy literature.