Lyman Frank Baum, known popularly as L. Frank Baum, was an American children’s author best known for his Land of Oz series. Born in 1856 in New York, Baum worked variously as a playwright and actor, businessman, and newspaper journalist before finding his greatest success in his forties when he began writing children’s stories.

Baum’s first book for children was 1897’s Mother Goose in Prose, a collection of stories based on Mother Goose nursery rhymes. His most famous and enduring work, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was published in 1900. In his lifetime, Baum authored more than 50 novels and over 80 short stories, many under pseudonyms such as Floyd Akers, Laura Bancroft, Edith Van Dyne, and Schuyler Staunton.

In November of 1882, he married Maud Gage, daughter of suffragist Matilda Gage. A known proponent for women’s rights, he often worked his advocacy into his writings, including some of the Oz and Edith Van Dyne stories. Baum died at the age of 62 on May 6, 1919, following a stroke, in Hollywood, California. Glinda of Oz, the fourteenth and final book he wrote for the Oz series, was published a year later, in July of 1920.
Book description: The original Santa Claus stories, by the creator of The Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum created the unforgettable world of Oz, but he also had an enormous impact on American culture by creating and memorializing the mythos of Santa Claus.

Writing to entertain his own children, Baum also captured the imaginations of children around the world with his images of Santa and his reindeer, stockings by the chimney, and a magical trip around the world in a single night.