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. 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.
