Sam Steele’s Adventures on Land and Sea / The Boy Fortune Hunters in Alaska
1906
Sam Steele’s Adventures in Panama / The Boy Fortune Hunters in Panama
1907
The Boy Fortune Hunters in Egypt
1908
The Boy Fortune Hunters in China
1909
The Boy Fortune Hunters in Yucatan
1910
The Boy Fortune Hunters in the South Seas
1911
Publication Order of Daring Twins Books
The Daring Twins
1911
Phoebe Daring
1912
Publication Order of Flying Girl Books
The Flying Girl
1911
The Flying Girl and Her Chum
1912
Publication Order of Mary Louise Books
Mary Louise
1916
Mary Louise in the Country
1916
Mary Louise Solves a Mystery
1917
Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls
1918
Mary Louise Adopts a Soldier
1919
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
A New Wonderland / The Magical Monarch of Mo
1900
Dot and Tot of Merryland
1901
The Master Key
1901
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
1902
The Enchanted Island of Yew
1903
Queen Zixi of Ix
1905
The Fate of a Crown
1905
John Dough and the Cherub
1906
Daughters of Destiny
1906
Annabel
1906
Tamawaca Folks
1907
Policeman Bluejay / Babes in Birdland
1907
The Last Egyptian
1908
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
Mother Goose in Prose
1897
American Fairy Tales
1901
The Twinkle Tales / Twinkle and Chubbins
1906
L. Frank Baum’s Juvenile Speaker / Baum’s Own Book for Children
1910
Little Wizard Stories of Oz
1913
Animal Fairy Tales
1969
Publication Order of Children’s Books
Father Goose: His Book
1899
The Army Alphabet
1900
The Navy Alphabet
1900
The Woggle-Bug Book
1905
Father Goose’s Year Book
1907
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
The Book of the Hamburgs
1886
The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows and Interiors
1900
About L. Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum (1856 to 1919) was an American author best known for “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (1900) and the thirteen Oz novels that followed it. Alongside the Oz series he wrote dozens of other novels, many of them under pseudonyms, as well as short stories, poems and stage scripts.
Lyman Frank Baum was born on 15 May 1856 in Chittenango, New York, the seventh of nine children, and grew up on his parents’ estate, Rose Lawn. He disliked his first name and went by Frank. As a young man he bred Hamburg chickens, and his first book, published in 1886, was a poultry guide. He also acted, wrote plays and ran a theatre his father built for him in Richburg, New York. In 1882 he married Maud Gage, daughter of the suffrage campaigner Matilda Joslyn Gage.
In 1888 the Baums moved to Aberdeen in Dakota Territory, where he ran a shop called Baum’s Bazaar and then edited a local newspaper. When the paper failed in 1891 the family moved to Chicago, where he worked as a reporter and travelling salesman and founded a trade magazine about shop window displays. “Mother Goose in Prose” (1897), illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, was a moderate success, and “Father Goose: His Book” (1899), with the illustrator W. W. Denslow, became the best-selling children’s book of its year.
Baum and Denslow published “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in 1900, and it was the best-selling children’s book for two years. A musical stage version opened in Chicago in 1902 and ran on Broadway in 1903. Baum tried several times to end the series and turn to other fantasies such as “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” and “Queen Zixi of Ix”, but he returned to Oz each time. From 1904 his fantasy books were illustrated mainly by John R. Neill.
Under the name Edith Van Dyne he wrote the “Aunt Jane’s Nieces” and “Mary Louise” books for girls, and as Floyd Akers he wrote the “Boy Fortune Hunters” adventure series. Costly stage and film ventures led him to declare bankruptcy in 1911, and in 1914 he started the Oz Film Manufacturing Company in Los Angeles.
Baum died on 6 May 1919 after a stroke. His last two Oz books, “The Magic of Oz” and “Glinda of Oz”, were published after his death, and the series was continued by other writers, notably Ruth Plumly Thompson. The 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz”, starring Judy Garland, was based on the first book.
