American Experience

L. Frank Baum spent much of his life trying to find his way to a career that he could sustain. He chose to ignore a comfortable career in his father's petroleum company. He chose to breed exotic chickens and publish a poultry trade journal and book. Next he tried the actor's life, even writing and producing the play "The Maid of Arran ". That too eventually died out. During this time he married Maud Gage, the daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a famous women's suffrage and feminist activist. Until his brother and father died, he helped market Castorline Oil lubricants. After visiting relatives in Aberdeen, South Dakota, he decided to move there to open Baum's Bazaar. He stocked it with items that were too sophisticated for most frontier families. When drought brought economic hard times, his business failed. That is when he became the editor of a weekly newspaper, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. Tensions between city residents and the Lakota Indians eventually pushed him back to Chicago where he sold crockery. Tired of being absent from his wife and four sons, he began writing. His first success was Mother Goose in Prose followed by Father Goose, His Story. The third book, based on witnessing the drought stricken plains in South Dakota, was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was a sensation and led to a popular musical that altered most of his story away. He briefly ran a film company in Hollywood, but that too did not prosper. He spent his last years writing one Oz book a year and tending his garden.