When he was 12, Baum was sent to the Peekskill Military Academy in Peekskill, New York, for two years, where he was absolutely miserable. DOROTHY'S 'YELLOW BRICK ROAD' MIGHT HAVE BEEN BASED ON A CHILDHOOD MEMORY.

Later, when Baum was 30, the magazine (supposedly without Baum's knowledge) published that original article in full, making it Baum's first published book. He stayed on as a column writer, and contributed a long, serialized article on breeding and rearing Hamburgs. At 23, he started his own chicken trade journal, which he soon sold to a rival. Another hobby was raising fancy chickens called Hamburgs.

THE FIRST ANIMALS HE WROTE ABOUT WERE CHICKENS.īaum was a sickly child and his father indulged his hobbies, including buying him a small printing press that he used to produce a newspaper. In honor of Baum, Chittenango holds an annual festival of all things Oz called Oz-Stavaganza. Lyman Frank Baum was born on in Chittenango, New York, to a wealthy family and raised on an estate called Rose Lawn in Mattydale, New York, just outside Syracuse. HIS HOMETOWN HOSTS AN OZ-FEST (BUT NOT THAT OZZFEST). In honor of his 162nd birthday, here are 15 facts about the actual man behind the curtain.

Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a book that has never been out of print and that has been produced as movies, theatrical plays and musicals, and led to further cultural phenomena like The Wiz and Wicked.

Baum the wonderful wizard of oz