L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz [Paperback]

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.

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.