Lyman Frank Baum was an American novelist, best known for his children’s books.Born in upstate New York in 1856, Baum was infatuated with the theatre from an early age. He married Maud Gage in 1882, and the couple moved to South Dakota where Baum ran a general store and edited the local newspaper. They later moved to Chicago where Baum held other journalistic posts, and in 1900 he published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to great critical acclaim. The novel remained the bestselling children’s book for two years after publication. Baum went on to write thirteen more novels based on the Land of Oz. He also wrote several other books, under a variety of pseudonyms.Baum invested a significant amount of his own money in various creative and artistic endeavours, resulting in straitened financial circumstances for the family. The stress of this took its toll, and he died of a stroke in 1919 at the age of 62.