The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Periodically she goes off the road, has an adventure, then returns and continues her journey. Throughout the book, Dorothy follows a yellow brick road, which runs straight through the story. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an episodic novel. The writer Gore Vidal suggested this disaster may have inspired the setting of Baum’s book. In 1893, a cyclone ripped through the state, killing 31 people and destroying two towns. He’d been to Kansas only once when he and Maud were touring with his melodrama ' The Maid of Arran.' He may have picked Kansas because of the tornado that sweeps Dorothy away.

Baum never lived in Kansas.īaum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Chicago. The character Dorothy was Baum’s tribute to the lost baby girl. She died in November 1898, right as Baum was writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Dorothy Gale was named after a niece who died.ĭorothy Gale is based on Dorothy Gage, the infant niece of Baum’s wife, Maud. There were three drawers marked “A to G,” “H to N,” and “O to Z.” And so Oz was born. Then one day he found himself looking at the filing cabinet in his study. He got the name “Oz” from his filing cabinet.Īt first, Baum had trouble coming up with a name for the magical land Dorothy visits. On the attached paper he scrawled, “With this pencil I wrote the manuscript of The Emerald City.” 2. He must have been proud of his work, for he framed the pencil stub and hung it on the wall of his study. Frank Baum-former chicken rancher, traveling salesman, and theater manager-had already published two successful children’s books when he started The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1898. Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Bermuda, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Comoros, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Gabon Republic, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Greenland, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Macau, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Africa, Suriname, Swaziland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Vietnam, Virgin Islands (U.S.L.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum