Where did Frank Baum live? L f baum the amazing in the wizard of oz

Who doesn’t know Volkov’s fairy tale about the girl Ellie, who finds herself in a magical land? But not everyone knows that in reality Volkov’s work is just a free retelling books The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by Lyman Frank Baum. In addition to this fairy tale, Baum dedicated thirteen more works to the Oz universe; in addition, other, no less interesting children's fairy tales came from his pen.

Baum Lyman Frank: biography of his early years

Frank was born in May 1856 into the family of a cooper in the small American town of Chittenango. Due to heart problems in the baby, doctors predicted that he would short life- 3-4 years, but, to everyone’s surprise, the boy outlived all his brothers and sisters.

Soon after Frank was born, his father became rich and was able to provide for his children Better conditions for growing up. Baum spent his entire childhood with private teachers teaching him.

Having become interested in books early on, Baum soon read all huge library father, which made him proud. Baum's favorite authors were Dickens and Thackeray.

In 1868 the boy was sent to military academy in Peekskill. True, Frank soon persuaded his parents to take him home.

One day, a guy received a miniature printing machine designed for publishing newspapers as a birthday gift from his father. Together with his brother, they began publishing a family newspaper. The Baums' home newspaper published not only chronicles family life, but also the first fairy tales written by young Frank.

From the age of seventeen, the writer was seriously interested in philately and tried to publish his own magazine dedicated to this topic. He later worked as a bookstore manager. His next hobby was breeding purebred chickens. Baum even dedicated a book to this topic - it was published just when the guy turned twenty. However, later he lost interest in chickens and became interested in theater.

Baum's personal life

After spending some time with the traveling theater, Lyman Frank Baum, at the age of twenty-five, met the beautiful Maude, and a year later they got married. The parents of Frank's beloved were not very fond of the dreamy son-in-law, but his father's wealth forced them to agree to this marriage.

Frank and Maude had four sons, whom Baum loved very much and often told bedtime stories of his own composition.

Over time, he began to record them, and soon published them - and so began writing career Bouma.

Successful writing career

After the success of the first children's book, a couple of years later Baum wrote a sequel, Father Goose: His Book. However, as he watched his own children grow up, he realized that it was necessary to compose a fairy tale for older children who were no longer interested in reading about the adventures of geese in the barnyard. This is how the idea arose to write about the girl Dorothy, who accidentally found herself in fairyland Oz.

In 1900, the debut tale of the cycle about the land of Oz was published. This work instantly gained popularity, and tens of thousands of children began to read the exciting adventures of Dorothy. On the wave of success, the author published a fairy tale about Santa Claus, and two years later - its continuation. However, readers were still waiting for a new book from him about a fairy-tale land, and in 1904 another fairy tale from the “Land of Oz” cycle was born.

Baum's last years

Trying to move away from the theme of Oz, Baum wrote other fairy tales, but readers were not so interested in them. Later writer completely switched to writing books about a magical land. In total, Baum dedicated fourteen books to her, the last two of which were published after the death of the writer, who died in 1919 from heart problems. It is noteworthy that the Oz series was so popular that even after the death of its creator, other writers began to publish numerous sequels. Of course, they were inferior to the original.

Summary of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"

The main character The most popular of the first part and most of the remaining books in the series was the orphan Dorothy (Volkov renamed her Ellie).

In the first book, a girl with faithful dog Toto is carried away to Oz by a powerful hurricane. Trying to return home, at the prompting of the good sorceress, Dorothy heads to the Emerald City to Oz, who rules there. On the way, the girl makes friends with the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion. They all need something from the wizard, and he promises to fulfill their requests if his friends rid the country of the evil witch. Having overcome many problems, each hero gets what he wants.

The plot of the story “The Wonderful Land of Oz”

In the second book, the main character is the servant of the evil witch Mombi Tip. One day, a boy runs away from her, taking with him a magic powder that can breathe life into inanimate objects. Having reached Emerald City, he helps the Scarecrow escape from there, as the city is captured by an army of militant knitting damsels led by Ginger. Together they ask the Tin Woodman and Glinda (the good witch) for help. It turns out that they need to find the true ruler of the city - the missing Princess Ozma. After a while, it turns out that Tip is Ozma, bewitched by the witch Mombi. Having returned to their true appearance, the princess and her friends regain their power.

The plot of "Ozma of Oz", "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz", "Journey to Oz", and also "The Emerald City of Oz"

Girly Dorothy appears again in the third book. Here she, together with the chicken Billina, finds herself in Fairyland. The girl learns with horror the tragic history of the Yves royal family. Trying to help them, she almost lost her own head. However, having met Princess Ozma (who came to help royal family in the company of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman), Dorothy manages to remove the spell from Eve's family and return home.

In the fourth book, as a result of an earthquake, Dorothy, her cousin Jeb and the decrepit horse Jim find themselves in a magical land of glass cities. Here they meet the wizard Oz and the kitten Eureka. To get out of this not at all friendly country, the heroes have to overcome a lot. The journey ends again in the land of Oz, where the old people are waiting for the girl good friends, who help her and her companions return home.

In the fifth book of the series, Princess Ozma had a birthday, where she really wanted to see Dorothy. To do this, she confused all the roads, and the girl, showing the way to a tramp named Shaggy, herself got lost and after numerous wanderings and adventures she ended up in the land of Oz to Ozma.

In the sixth story of the "Land of Oz" series, due to problems on the farm, Dorothy's family moves to live in the Magic Land. However, trouble looms over the Emerald City - an evil king who is building an underground passage is trying to capture it.

Other stories about Baum's Magic Land

Baum intended to end the epic with "The Emerald City of Oz." After which he tried to write fairy tales about other heroes. But young readers wanted to continue the adventures of their favorite characters. Ultimately, at the insistence of readers and publishers, Baum continued the series. In subsequent years, six more stories were published: “The Patchwork of Oz,” “Tik-Tok of Oz,” “The Scarecrow of Oz,” “Rinkitink of Oz,” “The Lost Princess of Oz,” “The Tin Woodman of Oz.” Oz." After the writer’s death, his heirs published manuscripts of two more stories from the Oz universe: “The Magic of Oz” and “Glinda of Oz.”

In the majority latest books the author was already tired of this topic, but young readers from all over the world asked him for new fairy tales, and the writer could not refuse them. It is noteworthy that even today some children write letters to the writer, despite the fact that Lyman Frank Baum died long ago.

Books about Santa Claus

Although world fame and the name Baum received thanks to the endless epic about the land of Oz, he also wrote other fairy tales. So, after the success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the writer composed a wonderful, good Christmas tale, “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.” In it he talked about fate good boy, raised by the lioness and the nymph Nekil, about how and why he became Santa Claus and how he received immortality.

The children also really liked this fairy tale. Apparently, Baum himself was closer to the story of Santa Claus than to the land of Oz, and he soon published the book “The Kidnapped Santa Claus.” In it, he talks about Klaus' main enemies and their attempts to disrupt Christmas. Later, the plot of this book was often used for many films.

For my own sake long life Lyman Frank Baum wrote more than two dozen books. These books were received differently by the public. It was his fairy tales that brought him the greatest popularity. And although the author repeatedly tried to write on other topics, and very successfully, for his readers he will forever remain the court chronicler of the country of Oz.

Baum Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 - May 6, 1919), American writer, “creator” of the magical land of Oz.

The famous American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, an ardent fan of Baum’s series, noted that these tales are “all sweet buns, honey and summer holidays" Carroll's Wonderland in comparison with the land of Oz is “a cold porridge of arithmetic at six in the morning, doused with ice water and long sitting at a desk.” According to Bradbury, intellectuals prefer Wonderland, and dreamers choose Oz: “Wonderland is who we are, and Oz is who we would like to become.”

How can you talk if you have no brains? - asked Dorothy.
“I don’t know,” answered the Scarecrow, “but those who have no brains love to talk.” (from the book "The Wizard of Oz")

Baum Lyman Frank

The name of this magical country, according to the Baum family legend, was born by chance. On a May evening in 1898, Baum was telling his and neighboring children another fairy tale, making it up as he went. Someone asked where all this was happening. Baum looked around the room, looked at the home filing cabinet with drawers A-N and O-Z and said, “In the Land of Oz.”

« The Amazing Wizard from the Land of Oz" was published in 1900 and was so loved by readers that Baum decided to continue the story about the wonderful country. Readers were looking forward to new stories, but after releasing the sixth fairy tale in 1910, the author decided to take a little rest. He published two tales about the Trot girl and Captain Bill, which were generally well received by readers, but they could not imagine that the story of the Land of Oz was completed.

Letters of protest were sent, with proposals to return to their favorite characters. Actually, fans of Sherlock Holmes reacted in much the same way when Conan Doyle rebelled and decided to part with his hero. The insidious plans of both writers were doomed to failure. Readers prevailed - both Conan Doyle and Baum returned to their series.

No, the heart is much better,” the Tin Woodman stood his ground. - Brains do not make a person happy, and there is nothing better in the world than happiness. (from the book "The Wizard of Oz")

Baum Lyman Frank

Baum left fourteen tales about the Land of Oz. Perhaps he would have written even more, but death from a heart attack confused all the cards for the Court Historian of Oz. However, the reader's love turned the period into an ellipsis. Also in 1919, the publishing house Reilly and Lee, which specialized in publishing stories about the Land of Oz, commissioned twenty-year-old Philadelphia journalist Ruth Plumley Thompson to continue the series.

Ruth Thompson completed her task well, and as for the number of titles that came from her pen, here she surpassed Baum himself. The tradition of “continuation” did not die out - a variety of writers took up the baton. The illustrator of most of Baum's lifetime publications, John Neal, also tried his luck in this area, offering readers three of his stories.

A new surge of interest in Baum occurred at the end of the fifties. On the initiative of a thirteen-year-old schoolboy from New York, the International Wizard of Oz Club was created in 1957. The club still exists today and has its own periodical, in which, as you might guess, we are talking about the details of life in the magical Land of Oz and the latest publications on this burning topic.

In our whole world there is nothing more beautiful than the happy face of a child.

Baum Lyman Frank

In 1939, as Americans lined up outside movie theaters to watch the Hollywood version of The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland as Dorothy, Alexander Volkov retold the series' first fairy tale in Russian. In general, he adhered very carefully to the original, although he omitted several scenes (the episode with the Warring Trees, the story of the Flying Monkeys, a visit to the Porcelain Country). Subsequently, Volkov proposed his own series, inspired by Baum’s motifs.

The real discovery of Baum in Russia, however, occurred in the nineties. The first sign was a book published in 1991 in “Moscow Worker”, which included the second, third and thirteenth tales of the series, and a little later a translation of “The Wizard” was proposed, where Volkov’s Ellie gave way to Baumov’s Dorothy and the text appeared in its original form - without cuts or additions.

Briefly about the article: It turns out we know very little about Oz creator Lyman Frank Baum. How did it happen that his first book was a treatise on chickens? Why did the writer’s descendants apologize to the Indians? What lessons does Baum give to project writers? We may not like the answers to these questions, but you can’t erase the words from the song.

Multi-machine operator from the project O.Z.

FRANK BAUM

Once upon a time good storyteller Lyman Frank Baum. He dreamed of wonderful countries where kind and evil wizards, talking animals and funny little guys - came up with the land of Oz, which is now so loved by children all over the world... Oh, what a sweet molasses! And, most importantly, it wasn’t like that, it wasn’t like that at all. How did it happen that Baum's first book was a treatise on chickens? Why did the writer’s descendants apologize to the Indians? What lessons does Baum give to project writers? You may like the answers to these questions, but you can’t remove the words from the song.

It is enough to study Baum’s biography for the myth of the good storyteller to melt away, like the Evil Witch who was doused with water from a bucket by Dorothy. Baum dreamed of dreaming, but not so much about fairy-tale kingdoms, but about making money, which explains his persistence in developing a literary vein: in a relatively short time (a little over twenty years) he created six dozen novels, as well as many stories, poems, scripts and more. At the same time, he remained in the history of literature as the author of “The Wizard of Oz” and its sequels. If Baum was a pioneer, it was only in one area - in the market of novels for youth, in current Western terminology - young adult novels, abbreviated as YA. Of course, such novels appeared in abundance before Baum, but it was he who made every effort to commercialize this area, turning Oz into the first fantasy project - and trying to squeeze the maximum profit out of it

Good Tales good because children like them, and in this sense, “The Wizard of Oz” is an excellent fairy tale. With adults, everything is more complicated: “This book is strangely warming and touching, but no one knows exactly why,” admitted Baum scholar Henry Littlefield. But this casket opens simply. By and large, the land of Oz suffered the same fate as the "Tao", one of the basic concepts Chinese philosophy: every thinker Ancient China used this term in his own way, so that the philosopher Han Yu called Tao an “empty position” that does not have a precisely fixed meaning. So is the country of Oz: everyone sees something of their own in it, but what L. Frank Baum saw in it - and whether he saw at least something - is another question.

ARRAN VIRGINS AND HAMBURG COOSTERS

Lyman Frank Baum - he did not like his first name and preferred to be called simply Frank - was born on May 15, 1856 in the village of Chittenango, New York (today the residents of this area are proud of their fellow countryman, annually holding Oz-Stravaganza festivals with costume parades and they even built a yellow brick road in 1982). Baum was lucky: he was born in rich family. His father is a businessman German origin, started out as a cooper, and made his fortune in Pennsylvania oil. Together with his brothers and sisters (there were nine of them in total, five lived to adulthood) Baum grew up on his father’s estate, Rose Lawn, which he remembered all his life as “paradise.”

Since Frank, according to his parents, grew up as a sickly dreamer, at the age of twelve he was sent to a military academy, where the boy stayed for two years, after which he returned home. The extent to which the Baums did not live in poverty can be judged by the following fact from Frank’s biography: when the teenager became interested in printing, his dad bought him a modest printing press, so soon Frank and his younger brother Henry began publishing the Rose Lawn Home Journal. The young man’s inclination towards entrepreneurship was evident even then: the magazine published advertisements, for which Baum, apparently (cautious biographers note), took money.

At the age of seventeen, Frank’s youthful hobby became a business: he started publishing the Stamp Collector magazine and, together with his friends, began selling philatelic products. Three years later, the young businessman became seriously interested in breeding, excuse me, Hamburg roosters, which are not at all the fantasy of the hero of the comedy “Gentlemen of Fortune,” but a real breed of birds, bred in Hamburg by crossing chickens, geese and turkeys. Since 1880, Baum has been publishing the magazine “Facts about Birds”, in 1886 he publishes the first book - not a fairy tale, but a brochure about the same Hamburg roosters, about their mating, nutrition and other matters important for poultry farmers. Baum did not limit himself to Kurami - he made and sold fireworks, which were in particular demand on Independence Day, and at one time worked as a clerk in his brother's haberdashery company.

In addition, Frank constantly tried himself in the theatrical field, but here it was no longer a matter of money, but of passion. The spotlight attracted Baum from his youth until his death. He beckoned and, as usual, burned. When Frank lived in Lone Rose, a local troupe promised him roles in exchange for sponsorship - the theater needed a wardrobe update - and then deceived him. In the end, the father, taking pity on his tormented son, simply built him a theater in Richburg. Frank immediately set to work on the play “The Maid of Arran” based on William Black’s novel “The Princess of Foula”: he composed it himself, staged it himself, wrote the music and songs himself, played it himself main role. The work had a pathetic subtitle: “A Play That Seduces All Hearts and Leaves an Imprint of Beauty and Nobility on the Low Nature of Man.” An idea like “he dances himself, sings himself, sells tickets himself” promised to be successful, but everything ended badly: while Baum and his comrades were touring with “The Maid of Arran”, the theater, along with the costumes and manuscripts of the plays, burned down, and the fire started during the performance with a prophetic called "Matches".

In 1882, Baum married and six years later (shortly after the theater failure) settled in Dakota. He first opened Baum's General Store, but soon went bankrupt because he often sold goods on credit. Then Baum took up editing a local newspaper. In December 1890, nine days before the Wounded Knee Massacre, which became the last major battle Indian Wars, the future author of good fairy tales composed a column in which he called for the destruction of all Indians so that they would stop annoying white Americans: they say, since we have offended them for centuries, let’s completely offend the Redskins and wipe this proud, “untamed and untamed” from the face of the earth. people who threaten our civilization. A piquant detail: the journalist Baum wrote the word “destruction” with a spelling error - extIrmination. In 2006, Baum's descendants apologized to the Sioux Indians for the writer.

In addition to practicing highly social journalism, Baum managed to sing in a quartet and enjoy the views of South Dakota, which he would later pass off in the book as views of Kansas (Baum once visited there for only two days). In 1891, the newspaper died, and the couple and their four sons moved again, now to Chicago, where Frank got a job as a reporter for the Evening Post. For some time he was a traveling salesman, in 1897 he began writing a magazine about window dressing and eventually, as in the case of Hamburg roosters, published a book on this topic, where he justified the use of dressed mannequins and clockwork mechanisms to attract clientele.

THE ADVENTURES OF FRANK BAUM IN SHOW BUSINESS

By this time, Baum had already become a children's writer. He himself rated his talent extremely highly: in Baum’s book from the “Aunt Jane’s Nieces” series, published under a pseudonym, a certain film director tells the heroines about storytellers whose books were successfully filmed, and lists them as follows: “Hans Andersen, Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll " All this would be funny if it weren’t so sad: Baum’s very first fairy tale, later renamed “The Amazing Adventures of the Magic Monarch Mo and His People,” was published in 1896 under the title “ New Country miracles,” and the reference to Carroll clearly reflected the author’s intention to promote himself at someone else’s expense.

Books for children were in demand, but Baum did not immediately find his niche. The New Wonderland, with its emphasis on absurdist humor, sold poorly, and in 1897 Frank published the much more traditional Mother Goose Tales in Prose. The moderate success of this book prompted him to create a sequel: joining forces with the artist William Denslow, Baum published a volume of poems, “Papa Goose: His Book,” which became a bestseller. In form it was “nonsense poetry” a la Edward Lear, in content it was something that the West now prefers not to remember: in children’s poems, Baum managed to insult blacks, Irish, Italians, Chinese and Indians, and in next book Papa Goose also hit the Jews.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with text by Baum and illustrations by Denslow (they shared equal rights to the book), was published in 1900. The story of the Kansas girl Dorothy, carried away by a tornado into a magical land where talking scarecrows, animals and even people made of iron live, was initially supposed to be limited to one book. “The Wizard” became a hit, but the next product of Baum and Denslow, “Dot and Tot in the Merry Land,” disappointed the reader, and then Frank decided to strike while the iron was hot: in 1904 he published the fairy tale “ Amazing country Oz,” which took place in the same world. And in 1907, having previously struggled with other projects, Baum returned to Oz for good, writing “Ozma from Oz,” and from then on he steadily published a book a year (with a break in 1911–1912).

The capitalization of Oz also went in other directions: a year after the publication of The Wizard, Baum, together with composer Paul Tietjens, turned the fairy tale into a musical. Frank, who loved to mythologize events, later recalled that one day a young man in glasses came to him and offered to make a fairy tale theatrical performance, “and wrap everything up...”. In fact, Tietjens and Baum were introduced by a Chicago artist who was illustrating another of Frank’s creations, and before “The Wizard,” they wrote two musicals, “Octopus” and “King Midas,” which no one wanted to stage. Baum greeted the idea of ​​bringing the plot of the bestseller to the stage coldly, but the musical, which started in 1902, ran successfully on Broadway for many years and earned the authors a fortune. Because of this, Baum forever quarreled with Danslow, who demanded that the profits be divided among three. By the way, with money from the “Wizard” the artist acquired an island as part of the Bermuda archipelago and declared it a kingdom, and appointed himself King Denslow I.

The plot of the musical was not the same as the book: the Wicked Witch of the West was not there at all, but the real King Oz appeared, who expelled the Wizard who had usurped power. Moreover, the musical made references to American politics, in particular to President Theodore Roosevelt and oil tycoon John Rockefeller. Perhaps this is where the legs grow from the interpretations of the fairy tale as a political pamphlet, which will be discussed below. The continuation of the musical based on the second book of the series failed - Dorothy and the Lion were not in the book, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman also disappeared from the musical, so the audience was not inspired by the performance.

Baum more than once or twice tried to put an end to the land of Oz, declaring that this book would be the last, but he never decided to slaughter the cash cow. In Frank's brain, projects arose, one more fantastic than the other. In 1905, after moving to California, he said in an interview that he had acquired Pedlow Island and wanted to turn it into an amusement park. Wonderful country Oz." Biographers have searched in vain for this island or even evidence that Baum acquired any islands. One way or another, after the failure of another musical, he abandoned the idea of ​​the park.

Passion for the theater slowly but surely destroyed Baum - his musicals left the stage almost faster than they appeared. Fleeing from bankruptcy, Frank transferred all his property, including the library and typewriter, to his wife’s name, and also sold the rights to books about Oz to the publishing house M.A. Donahue, who found nothing better than to release their cheap editions and claim that they are much cooler than the new Baum fairy tales. In 1914, Frank went into filmmaking, founded The Oz Film Manufacturing Company, tried to make films for children, but again went broke and suffered from poor health. In May 1919, Baum suffered a stroke and died, just short of his sixty-third birthday. On next year his last, fourteenth tale about the land of Oz was published.

BOOKS FOR EVERYONE, AND NO ONE WILL LEAVE OFFENDED

As befits a project author, L. Frank Baum wrote not only under his own name, but also under seven pseudonyms, three of which were female. For example, he published the popular series “Aunt Jane's Nieces” as Edith Van Dyne. Baum approached writing in a business-like manner, trying to reach a variety of target groups. He wrote adventurous novels for adults, such as "The Destiny of the Crown" (with a Brazilian flavor), "Daughters of Destiny" (set in Balochistan, main character- Muslim), “The Last Egyptian.” Baum sold series about Sam Steele and Aunt Jane's nieces to teenagers of different genders. For small children he had the irreplaceable Papa Goose. Baum even tried to replace “The Land of Oz” with another fantasy series, publishing “Sea Fairies” and “Sky Island” under his own name, but did not succeed. In the end it all came down to Oz; Baum even made it a habit to include characters from his other fairy tales, like “Queen Zixi of Country X” and “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus,” so that the reader would be interested in these books too. At the same time, there is no need to talk about any coherence of the Oz cycle: Baum’s characters quickly change their appearance and past, even their names can be spelled differently.

Baum's attempt to invade SF territory was also not very successful: the novel The Key to All Locks (1901), which the author called an “electric fairy tale,” was barely noticed by critics. In the book, teenager Rob Joslin experiments with electricity, entangles his house in a “network of wires” and accidentally summons the Electricity Demon. It turns out that Rob touched the Electric Key to All Locks, and the Demon is obliged to fulfill nine of his wishes. Since Rob does not know what to ask from the Demon, he brings him six gifts of his choice.

Now, a hundred years later, we use two of the six gifts of the Demon - a small tube that shocks the offender with an electric shock, and a device that shows what happened in the world during the day. Other gifts still seem just as fantastic: a pill that is enough to satiate you for the whole day ahead, clothing that protects you from physical impact, a miniature levitator, and even a “character indicator” - a set of glasses that show what kind of person a person is. However, Baum’s fans believe that with these glasses he predicted “augmented reality,” that is, reality with virtual elements. Putting on glasses, Rob sees letters on a person’s forehead: K if the person is kind, C if he is cruel, W if he is wise, F if he is a fool, and so on.

One could admire the writer’s prognostic talent if it weren’t for the secondary nature of all the Demon’s gifts. After the advent of radio, only the lazy did not think about sending images (in 1884 Paul Nipkow proposed “mechanical television”, in 1907 Boris Rosing patented the cathode ray tube), other ideas were also in the air, and Baum could have borrowed glasses from Andersen’s fairy tale “ They can’t come up with anything.” Baum's fans are delighted with the wireless telephone described in the novel "Tik-Tok from Oz", but the trouble is that in the fairy tale itself it is lost among all sorts of Magic Binoculars, Magic Pictures and Magic Magnets. What’s really new in The Key to All Locks is the teenager’s refusal of the last three gifts: “Someone will think I’m a fool for giving up these inventions,” Rob thinks, “but I’m one of the people who knows when to stop. A fool is one who does not learn from his mistakes. I'm learning from myself, so I'm fine. It’s not easy to be ahead of your time by a century!” Such a critical attitude towards progress was rare before the First World War, especially in books for children.

INTERPRETATION OF OZ-VISIONS

Against the backdrop of massive literary failures For Baum, the runaway success of The Wizard of Oz is puzzling. How does this book appeal to readers? Over the past hundred years, attempts have been made to explain this phenomenon more than once or twice. Historians, theosophists, and Freudians have been involved in the interpretation of the fairy tale, especially pointing out that Freud’s book “The Interpretation of Dreams” was published in the same year as “The Sorcerer.” Baum's fairy tale according to Freud looks unattractive: starting point Dorothy’s adventures are supposedly based on a scene not described by Baum, in which the girl spies on the adults at night, because they sleep in the same room: “In one corner there was a large bed of Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, and in the other there was Dorothy’s small bed.” What she sees shocks Dorothy, and she projects her fear in the form of a tornado, which is very phallic in shape. Dorothy's conventional mother, Aunt Em, is split into two figures in the fairy tale - the Good Witch of the South and the Wicked Witch of the West, whom Dorothy crushes under the house. As for the conventional father, he, of course, becomes the Wizard himself, named Oz. The Emerald City, in which there are many vertical towers, as well as a broom, are symbols of everything that you are thinking about.

Then the Freudians move on to the silver slippers and the Wizard behind the screen... but, perhaps, enough mockery of the fairy tale: L. Frank Baum clearly did not mean anything like that. The same screen does not carry any secret meaning: in the Baums’ house it was customary to place the Christmas tree behind such screens, and Frank loved to talk with relatives while remaining “invisible.” Baum saw the yellow brick road with his own eyes in his youth. The Emerald City could have been inspired by the White City, built in Chicago in 1893, when the World Exhibition, and so on.

Historians interpret the fairy tale in their own way. Professor Henry Littlefield has theorized that The Wizard of Oz is a parable about populism in American politics in the 1890s. The Emerald City is the Capitol, the Wizard is the President of the United States, the Cowardly Lion is the leader of the populists William Jennings Bryan, the Woodcutter represents the proletarians, the Scarecrow represents the farmers. In the 1990s, economists further developed this theory: it is clear that the yellow brick road and silver shoes indicate the demand of populists to freely mint gold and silver coins. And the dog's name, Toto, refers to the word teetotaler, “teetotaler,” - supporters of the ban on alcohol were allies of the populists. Well, why the city is Emerald, that is, green, is clearer than clear: this is the color of American banknotes. Baum was a journalist, after all, he was well versed in politics. To which theosophists, proud that the author of The Wizard was interested in Theosophy, note that...

But maybe this is the key to the success of The Wizard of Oz? A simple story about a girl who wanted to go home, about her friends who lacked self-confidence, and about a Wizard who turned out to be an ordinary person, can be filled with any meaning if desired. Why not see in this tale also a parable about fantastic literature? Judge for yourself: The woodcutter symbolizes science fiction(essentially he is a cyborg), Lion is a fantasy (talking animal), Scarecrow is a horror (with such and such a name). SF is often accused of having no heart, fantasy - that it is cowardly escapism, horror - that it is rarely smart. Well, The Wizard is, of course, great literature, the notorious bolitra, which in fact cannot give anything to anyone.

Then none of the invitees knew that they would gather at Baum’s house a little earlier and for a completely different reason - on May 6, 1919, Frank’s heart stopped. The writer, beloved by many generations of children, never lived to see his 63rd birthday.

The sick boy turned out to be healthier than his brothers and sisters

However, tell in mid-19th century, who Benjamin and Cynthia Baum believed that their seventh child would live so long - they would hardly have believed this prophecy. If only because Frank, born on May 15, 1856, had very little chance of even living to be three years old. Already in the first year of his life, doctors did not hide the truth from his parents: the baby had a congenital heart defect. And only a calm, measured and happy life, preferably not in big city, but in rural areas.

By the time Frank was born, Benjamin was a cooper making oil barrels. Precisely those that were called “barrels” due to the fact that that is how much oil was placed in them. But the seventh child became like lucky mascot- soon dad Baum from a cooper became a seller of black gold, and his business went uphill so rapidly that he became rich in a short time.
Photo: George Steckel - Los Angeles Times photographic archive, ru.wikipedia.org

But the children were his headache. Four died before they even lived a few years, and five eventually became adults, but, alas, only Frank lived to an old age. But then, at the dawn of Benjamin and Cynthia’s youth, it seemed to them that their main task was to help their sick seventh child.

A typewriter is the best gift

They didn’t just blow away specks of dust from him. He lived on a ranch, although his father had his own house in New York, most He devoted time to walks, and endured both heat and cold equally. Ben could allow the teachers to come to Frank; he did not go to school. He was such a bookworm that he soon overcame his father’s entire, by no means small, library. Most of all, the boy liked William Thackeray.

Dickens was still alive at this point, so all the new products that came from the pen of the classic were immediately delivered to Frank. By the way, such a passion for his son was a source of special pride for Ben. He told everyone: “My Frank cracks these books like nuts!” Although you must agree - the master psychological novel Dickens is not “too tough” for every adult...

Frank's 14th birthday was perhaps one of his most happy days! The father came to his son’s room early in the morning and brought him a very large gift. When the boy unfolded the paper, he gasped: it was a typewriter! Quite a rarity at that time.


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Needless to say, this was the beginning - on the same day, Frank and his little brother already delighted their parents with the first family newspaper. And then the newspaper, which later grew into a magazine, began to be published regularly. In addition to family chronicles, it also contained fiction - Frank often wrote fairy tales for the younger ones...

Restless Frank

In 1881, Frank fell in love with the charming Maude. The “candy-bouquet” period dragged on; the somewhat frivolous young man, with his head in the clouds, did not seem to Maud’s parents to be an exceptionally successful match. But, firstly, the girl said that she would not marry anyone else but Frank, and secondly, he, after all, was the son of a rich oil tycoon, so he could well provide for the future of their daughter.

If they had known that stubborn Frankie would rather go begging than take money from his parents, they might have thought better. But young Baum adhered to the position that he should become a self-made man, because his father also once started from scratch...

Baum's children loved fairy tales very much

Be that as it may, on November 9, 1882, Frank and Maude got married. They had four children, for whom Baum, in fact, began writing fairy tales. Or rather, they were initially oral. Needless to say, the children listened to Frank with with open mouths, because he really loved to compose good fairy tales, in his stories good always prevailed over evil. And besides, Frank admitted to Maude that he really didn’t want the children to learn life on “ evil fairy tales Brothers Grimm."

The first that Frank officially released in 1899 was Uncle Goose's Tales. In memory of how he raised Christmas geese in his youth. The children really liked the fairy tales, but since the older ones were no longer kids, they pointed out to the parent some inconsistency. Like, we want to know about magical adventures, and Uncle Gusak is “tied” to the poultry yard.
Photo: ru.wikipedia.org

Frank took the remark into account and began writing a “saga” about a magical little girl Dorothy from Kansas, who was “transported” by a hurricane along with her little dog to a country that none of the adults had any idea about.

Perhaps, while finishing the first book, Baum did not even think that the “series” would stretch for as many as 14 episodes. But the children demanded “a continuation of the banquet,” and the writer’s imagination worked with redoubled energy.

How Dorothy became Ellie...

How fast magical story Bouma has spread around the world! It was translated into several languages, and only in a country far from the country of victorious socialism has almost no one heard about the author of Dorothy and the Land of Oz. Because there was one clever man by name, who, taking Baum’s “saga” as a basis, rearranged it in his own interpretation, “shamefully” keeping silent about the fact that Frank’s book is already at least 40 years old. Volkov’s work was called “The Wizard of the Emerald City” and appeared on the bookshelf in 1939.

Photo: ru.wikipedia.org

It must be said that Volkov, a mathematics teacher in the Urals, was a good translator. And when in 1938 Lazar Lagin’s book “Old Man Hottabych” was published, which immediately became widely known, Alexander Melentyevich realized that, probably, a book in which even the most magical wonders will be "exposed".

However, God did not offend Volkov’s conscience. After the release of the fairy tale about the girl Ellie, he did not take on the continuation of the story for almost a quarter of a century. At first, he slightly altered his own version: in 1939, Ellie, like Baum, is an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle, and in 1959 - already ordinary girl who has a mom and dad. And dozens of such discrepancies appeared.

And as soon as the period defining Baum’s copyright passed, Volkov “gave birth” to numerous sequels, which are still fewer than Baum’s. Volkov simply did not have enough time - he died in 1977, shortly after writing “The Secret of the Abandoned Castle.”

19 years of full glory!

But let's return to Baum. Over 19 years of writing, Frank wrote 62 books. Moreover, 14, as I already said, were dedicated to The Magic Land of Oz, 24 books were written exclusively for girls and 6 for boys.

And although we don’t know everything, in the USA the beginning of the 20th century was marked by the “Baum boom” - it was decided to film his book, and Frank personally participated not only in writing the script, but also in directing the film. In total, during the writer’s lifetime, 6 films based on his “saga” were made. In addition, from 1902 to 1911, the musical based on this book was staged on Broadway 293 times!

To be closer to film set, Frank Baum and his family moved to Hollywood. This is where he died...