Customer Reviews

L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz: A Biography

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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 taught "good" children's literature, something Rogers equates with "literary pretension." As recently as 1994, Rogers says, the books were rejected for their "blandness," which suggests that the author of that study, scholar Gillian Avery, had either bad taste, dead senses, no imagination, or simply hadn't read the series. Rogers provides the minimum of a brief synopsis for each of the Oz books, as well as for each title in Baum's numerous other fictional series for children, including The Boy Fortune Hunters, Mary Louise, and Aunt Jane's Nieces.

Roger's 22-page analysis of the first and most famous book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is exceptional; even the most devoted Oz enthusiast will find something new in her discussion. Comparing Dorothy and Carroll's Alice, Rogers find Dorothy the more admirable role model, as "responsible, self-reliant, brave, sensible, honest, and self-confident" Dorothy is "able to make sense of the confusing world she is plunged into," and "can act effectively and resist unreasonable authority." Rogers illustrates how the laws of the land of Oz illustrate the values of self-accepting individuality, self-respect, respect for others, and equality; how the book teaches "a wholesome practical morality through examples." She notes that Oz has only female witches, all of who bear real power, while the lone wizard is a powerless humbug and a fraud. Referencing Baum's earlier how-to-decorate book, The Shop Window, Rogers underscores Baum's principle that while misleading people is wrong, it's an almost necessary evil, as people demand "gratification of impossible wishes." Thus the Wizard's Emerald City is largely an illusion, as are his hopeful solutions to the Scarecrow's, Lion's, and Tin Woodman's problems; "how can I help being a humbug...when all these people make me do things that everybody knows can't be done?" Rogers places the book in its proper historical fairytale context, and, in an accurate, happily non-politically correct psychoanalytical passage, claims that Dorothy is allowed "the opportunity, enviable to any child, of killing the bad mother without guilt." Rogers also interprets The Wonderful Wizard of Oz within the context of its Americanism and the age in which it was written, and provides the etiology of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman.

Later chapters contain extended, equally interesting interpretations of the Gump, Jack Pumpkinhead, the sex-changing Tip, Ozma, the Woogle Bug, both Nome Kings, Tik-Tok, Scraps the Patchwork Girl, even Billina, the cantankerous hen. Fans of both W.W. Denslow and John R. Neill will find the sections discussing each highly satisfying.

Rogers' writing is confident, crisp, detailed, and clear. Her touch is light but thorough throughout. She clearly loves her subject, about which she has a ready sense of humor. The left-handed Baum was `the Royal Historian of Oz,' and with L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz, Rogers has become Baum's own Royal Historian, a position too long vacant, and now gracefully filled.

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.

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 Neill's pictures.

The book contains 35 pages of Notes, many of them long and detailed additions to the text. A six page listing of Baum's published works will be a joy to collectors. The 13-page index makes it easy to find any details quickly in the text. This is a wonderful work with a positive perspective on Baum, his writings, and the time in which he lived.

When I was little, Oz lust made a thief of me. My grandfather ordered a dozen books in the series at a time, doling them out to me on birthdays or when I had tonsillitis. I found out in which cabinet he hid them and temptation took control of me. Although I was caught practically in the act, I went unpunished. Who can spank a child for wanting to read?

There were a total of 40 Oz books on my shelf (only the first third --- THE WIZARD OF OZ (1900) and 13 others --- by L. Frank Baum) and an Emerald City built of green glass and construction paper in our basement. Oz was a world intensely real to me; the boundary between its wonders and ordinary existence was noticeably porous. If Dorothy could be blown by a tornado into fairyland, why (to paraphrase the song) couldn't I?

Katharine M. Rogers understands my passion. In L. FRANK BAUM: CREATOR OF OZ, Rogers, an early Oz aficionado herself, combines a scholar's detachment with a child's delight. She is also a revisionist critic, bemoaning the Oz books' exclusion from the haughty scholarly canon of "good" kids' literature. In this book, the first full-length adult treatment of Baum's life (although there is a lengthy biographical essay in the centennial edition of Michael Patrick Hearn's THE ANNOTATED WIZARD OF OZ), Rogers undertakes to follow the Yellow Brick Road to the origins of Baum's imaginative universe and establish his works as genuine classics.

Baum didn't immediately become a full-time writer. For years he was the very model of a self-reliant, entrepreneurial American. He was involved in a number of different businesses, including poultry breeding, china selling and newspaper editing. While none of his enterprises ever really took off, his spirit of adventure, his independence and egalitarianism, his healthy skepticism and persistent optimism are all reflected in the characters he created and the land they inhabit. The novelist and critic Alison Lurie once called Oz "an idealized version of America in 1900, happily isolated from the rest of the world, underpopulated and largely rural, with an expanding magic technology and what appears to be unlimited natural resources." Rogers develops this idea further, offering some splendid insights into Baum's pastoral vision, individualistic values and ambivalent relationship to science and technology (which, in his books, are closely identified with magic) --- marvelous in their power, but dangerous if misused.

Baum was also very American in his industry and ambition. However, in marked contrast to our sequel-crazed age, he did not originally think of THE WIZARD as the first in a series. For some time he continued to invent new fairylands; when none of them really caught on, he finally resigned himself to a yearly Oz book (a pattern that would continue until his death in 1919). He also wrote adult novels, plays and non-fantasy series for children under pseudonyms like Edith Van Dyne and Laura Bancroft.

The female pen names are not as incongruous as they might seem. Rogers, whose field is women's studies, is particularly enlightening about Baum's feminism: his wife, Maud, was the daughter of a major figure in the fight for women's right to vote. She, not Frank, was the disciplinarian and financial manager in the family, an arrangement that seems to have suited them both. Oz itself verges on the matriarchal --- girls are the heroes of ten of the fourteen books and they are brave, strong, honest, practical and unpretentious. There are no frogs being transformed into princes here. In the LAND OF OZ, second in the series, Baum turns the gender tables on traditional fairytale magic when the boy protagonist, Tip, turns out to be the lost princess, Ozma.

Because Rogers' biography is a pioneering effort, it can't afford to skimp on any detail of Baum's life --- so there are, inevitably, tedious moments. There is also a great deal of dutiful synopsizing of each volume this very prolific author published, not all of them of equal value or importance. Still, on the whole, Rogers does a fine job of combining biography with an intelligent and balanced literary/social assessment of Baum's work. She doesn't pretend that his writing style is "poetic or beautiful or especially distinctive" (and she rightly criticizes his annoying penchant for dialect), but she is persuasive in her advocacy of his talents: "Baum's greatest gifts were the two most important ones for a writer of fantasy: he could create a wonderful world and he could make it believable." Underpinning this credibility was a vast respect for his audience. "Father never 'wrote down' to children," Baum's son Harry said. "They were his friends and companions and he always treated them as such."

L. FRANK BAUM: CREATOR OF OZ is likely to be sought out principally by those who already love Baum's work. People who know Oz only through the 1939 Judy Garland film will be less enchanted, for Rogers doesn't like the movie very much. Above all, she disparages the idea (entirely absent in the Baum original) that Dorothy's trip to Oz was nothing but a dream. For true believers like Rogers and me, this is nothing short of sacrilege.

--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

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)

L. Frank Baum, Creator of Oz is a necessary books for fans of Oz. Katharine M. Rogers provides a clear, balanced examination of the details of his life and includes analysis, and relates it to his life, of his writings, both Oz and other. The most important aspect of this book are the sections describing his other (often) successful series for children, such as Aunt Jane's Niece, which are little known today. The weakness of the book is the fact that outside of his writing, Baum's life is not particularly exciting. It seems very pleasant and homey and I could not be happier for him, but it does not always make for thrilling reading. Still, Baum fans will be delighted to have his entire story told so compentently with the added bonus of the author's informative analysis.

Although this book seems a bit on the dry side, it is nevertheless a well researched biography of a very influential writer almost forgotten (although obviously his Oz works continue to be important- albeit mostly due to the MG film).

Rogers does well to show how his background involvement in the suffragette movement most likely helped to inspire him to write one of the few female protagonist in fantasy literature (one only has to look to Harry Potter to see how little progress the genre has made in the past 100 years). One wonders if Rogers stumbled upon the curious fact that Baum's mother-in-law was a prominent member of the New York state women's movement at the turn of the century when she was researching some of her other books.

But over all the book seems to fall flat in giving the reader s true sense of the man and his times. While there is a fair amount of background on Baum's involvement with the women's movement and Theosophy neither aspect is fully developed for the reader. Rogers seems to feel that the reader ought to know exactly how these movements fit into turn-of-the-century life and what they were all about. Granted 1900 America is not exactly foreign to today's readers, but many of the ideals that people in that time subscribed to are all but forgotten. The women's movement is not feminism as we understand it today, a little more detail and background would help.

Over all one does not get a sense of the time and place Baum existed in. Granted, his life was fairly boring, routine and seems, despite constant money troubles, fairly well off. However context would help establish a reason to care about Baum other than the fact one might enjoy his writing. There are plenty of text synopses, but little delving into where the stories came from. Was he simply trying to modernize the fairytale? Based on Rogers book one gets the impression Baum was something of a hack, simply grinding out tales for children. I feel that there is more to his writings than that.

Kudos to Rogers for exploring fully Baum's non-Oz works. Again, a little more follow up (beyond the four or five paragraphs at the end) about what happened to the Oz series after Baum died and what happened to his copyrights etc (is the book in public domain? What happened to his original publishing house as I do not recall they still exist...?) His influence has been great ( C S Lewis owes at least a small debt to Baum) but Rogers seems to attribute it all to the MGM movie.

Thank you reviewer "member of the Coeur d'Alene Nation's" for quoting L. Frank Baum in an effort to school the uneducated masses:
"This is an excerpt from an editorial penned by Baum when he was an editor at the Aberdeen Pioneer:

"The PIONEER has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."

Sad that a man who celebrated diversity in the Land of Oz advocated genocide in his homeland."


It is almost criminal that American history is so devoid of any real knowledge of the true lives of its "heroes," "discoverers," and "visionaries".

When people like L. Frank Baum, Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, et. al., are celebrated for "wholesome practical morality," and applauded for their ""values of self-accepting individuality, self-respect, respect for others, and equality, it is no wonder why, once again, our country is struggling with issues of racism, hatred, and intolerance.

Racism is built into the very foundations of our historical psyche and will only be healed when the haters "behind the curtain are revealed", the systemic effects of their hatred are addressed, and America finally resolves the false notions that have kept other races and peoples from being shown the respect, dignity, and acceptance that the "white visitors" from other lands were shown by America's First Nation Peoples and Africans who were the heart and soul of America.

After reading this review, one would think that L. Frank Baum, "the Royal Historian of Oz," lived as a principled, "decent, hardworking... gentleman, who all thought exceptionally sweet-natured and easy-going..."

Compare this seemingly gentle soul to the real L. Frank Baum who, as Editor of the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer let his true self be known when among other editorials he wrote the following about America's First Nations People, whose entire cultures and societies had been all but annihilated as he and his contemporaries spouted their maniacal views:

"The nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they should die than live the miserable wretches that they are." (L. Frank Baum, as cited in The American Holocaust, Stannard, 1992, p. 126).

While Roger's writing may well be "confident, crisp, detailed, and clear," it is far from "thorough throughout." For, nowhere is there any reality check of the true biography of a man whose very beliefs negate "the laws of the land of Oz" and illustrate the antithesis of the "values of self-accepting individuality, self-respect, respect for others, and equality."

When one becomes knowledgeable about the real racist behind the curtain, and his contemptuous view of the Great Nations of Peoples who were herded and murdered along "The Trail of Tears," L. Frank Baum takes us on a very different journey than the persona that has Dorothy, and party, skipping and singing along his "Yellow Brick Road." While his book may teach "a wholesome practical morality through examples," his real life certainly does not.

This is an excerpt from an editorial penned by Baum when he was an editor at the Aberdeen Pioneer:

"The PIONEER has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."

Sad that a man who celebrated diversity in the Land of Oz advocated genocide in his homeland.