L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz: A Biography

A strength of this biography is in the author's inclusion of synopses of all Baum's major works. One gets a "Oz eye" view of Baum, his family, and his whole writing enterprise in just a few, easy to read pages. I really liked the book and think anyone interested in Baum from a non-political viewpoint will enjoy it, too. The author is not into analyzing the political symbolims of Ozworld and its inhabitants. I was not aware of all the other products of Baum's fertile mind. Nor was I really aware of his struggle for recognition in the publishing world. All in all, a very good and brief read.

During the past several months, I have enjoyed reading the Oz books aloud to my little sisters, from which we have all derived much pleasure. As Baum himself so eloquently put it, "My books are intended for all those whose hearts are young, no matter what their ages may be." Katherine M. Rogers describes L. Frank Baum as an imaginative, impractical, optimistic dreamer who loved flowers, music and above all, children. I got a sense of that when reading the charming forwards to his books, but this biography gave me a better picture of what he really was like. One of the things that surprised me most was that both he and his wife, Maud, were feminists. I can only imagine that turn of the century Americans would have been shocked to learn that while he provided the family income, Maud managed their budget! While this may have been unorthodox, it was only logical since she was the more practical of the two. She was indeed more than just a helpmate to him; she was his friend and encourager. I smiled through several stories involving the two of them that showed how much they loved each other. Something that I found disappointing was that Frank blamed Christianity for many of the problems of the day. What really irked him were the hypocrites. I believe he should have looked to what Jesus said instead of listening to self-absorbed church goers to form his opinion of the Bible. Sometimes he sounded like an atheist because of his faith in science, and at other times he seemed more influenced by New Age philosophy because of his belief in supernatural beings. The marriage of these two ideas deeply influenced his writing. Anyone who likes "The Wizard of Oz" or is interested in Victorian authors should check out this insightful book. However, Baum's view of Christianity saddened me. His death and few last touching words to his wife were nothing short of tragic. There will always be people who twist the Bible for their own purposes, but that does not make it false. I would encourage those in doubt to turn to the Bible itself. In truth, I think Baum would have found heaven closer to his wondrous Emerald City than the paradise he so bitterly wrote about in his work, "Policeman Bluejay." (pg. 150-151)

Katherine Rogers, like myself and thousands of others, is a fan of L. Frank Baum and his books about Oz. She is also a scholar and has written a truly detailed and well-documented biography of this interesting and influential man. It is a valuable addition to the body of literature, both fiction and nonfiction, about Oz. For those who have never read an Oz book, this is still an important book. L. Frank Baum was an intriguingly different man for his times and reading about his life gives wonderful insight into America of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His feminism and respect for children and animals become some of the endearing features of his fiction and what make his Oz series classics of American literature.He married Maud Gage, the daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, one of the leading women suffragists. So the information that Katherine Rogers provides on his relationship to his mother-in-law and his home life with Maud is invaluable to students of the women's movement. Gage's own 1893 book, WOMAN, CHURCH AND STATE, has just been brought back into print by Humanity Books in their Classics In Women's Studies series. Her belief that christianity and the Western state are the very basis of the oppression of women, which is detailed in this work, was radical at the time. Her own spirituality found a home in Theosophy which became the religious practice of Baum and was influential in his writings.Baum took his family to the Dakota territory where three of Maud's siblings had settled. The book's account of their life on the northern prairie will be of interest to those who study the history of 19th century Dakota. As first a merchant and then a newspaperman, Baum's views on life in the Dakotas are well represented. It is in this section where we first encounter Baum's racism. He wrote an editorial where he called the native Americans "a pack of whining curs" who should be totally exterminated [p.259]. Rogers doesn't develop this aspect of his personality very deeply saying that for Baum these were "thoughtless lapses, in which Baum unthinkingly went along with contemporary attitudes [p.272]." Her treatment of his racism is confined to the Notes at the end of the book.For those who are avid readers of Baum's fiction, the book is a wealth of information. Each of his novels are analyzed and related to the events in his life. When possible drafts are compared with completed works to gain insight into Baum's creative process. His relationships with his illustrators W. W. Denslow and John R. Neill are described. The close relationship he had with Denslow is contrasted by the distance he maintained with John R. Neill. His dispute with Denslow, who illustrated The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, over the ownership of the characters may have contributed to his reluctance to know Neill better. Baum and Neill only met once. He relating to Neill mostly through the publisher, which accounts for some of the mistakes that exist between Baum's descriptions and Nei

Katherine M. Rogers' L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz is an excellent biography of the American writer, one that should generate new interest and encourage further scholarly research on this neglected and still underrated American author. A decent, hardworking, and ambitious gentleman, Baum (1856-1919), who all thought "exceptionally sweet-natured and easy-going," lived a full and adventurous life, even in his later years, when most of his adventuring took place in his colorful and far-reaching imagination. The confident, plainspoken Baum, an epitome of civility, was a modest Renaissance man, almost something of a wizard himself. Before discovering his talent for writing children's books and creating Oz, the young Baum worked as a an actor, a playwright, an oil salesman, a "frontier" storekeeper, a newspaper editor and a publisher. Later, he was also the producer of `radio plays' and, in the very early days of cinema, films based on his Oz creations. Happily chasing rainbows, Baum moved from one part of the country to another as the spirit and his intuition moved him. Married to the daughter of suffragist leader Matilda Gage, Baum was an active and life-long supporter of women's rights. As Rogers clearly shows, the free-thinking Baum never ruled the roost in his own home; domineering, no-nonsense, feet-on-the-ground wife Maud consistently provided the necessary ballast that kept their home, finances, and Baum's career afloat. In one hilarious episode, Baum makes the mistake of enthusiastically introducing a dozen donuts to the household; for daring to insult her cooking, pantry, and shopping habits, Baum is browbeaten and given a chilly reception for a full week, until he comes to understand that he's "not to buy any food whatsoever unless asked to get it" by his wife. From the early days of their marriage, Baum comes to understand that "around the house," Maud "is the boss." When their very young son cheerfully throws the family cat out the second story window, Maud dangles the child from the same window as the neighbors watch on in horror, an incident the boy never forgot. As Rogers points out, Oz was a matriarchy. Never very close to his own mother, who frowned on his "disregard for conventional religion," both Baum and Maud were devoted adherents of Theosophy, another of Matilda Gage's intellectual interests. In Theosophy, Rogers says, Baum found a belief system and a vision "of the cosmos in which physical and spiritual reality were part of one great whole, filled with beings seen and unseen," one that was to bear fruit for Baum in his numerous fairy books. Rogers believes that the reason both his fairies and fairylands are "so concretely realized" is because Baum honestly believed fairies "had spiritual or subjective reality." In her introduction, Rogers, who was devoted the Oz books as a child, relates her dismay in finding, as new college English instructor in 1958, that the Oz books were not taught by "responsible teachers," who only

Since his death in 1919, Baum's life story has been told in at least one movie, a documentary, multiple children's biographies, articles, and several books. Comparing most of these to Katherine Rogers' new biography on the creator of the great American fairy tale, her's boldly stands out. While the book does have an uneven amount of insight into Baum's connection to the Women's Suffrage Movement and his practicing of Theosophy, this may the most complete look at Baum ever printed up to now.