Lyman Frank Baum was born on 15 May, 1856 in Chittenango, New York. He spent his childhood living on a luxurious country estate called 'Rose Lawn', his father having made a fortune in the oil fields of Pennsylvania.

He married Maud Gage in 1882, the daughter of a leading suffragette, and the family moved westwards to South Dakota. He worked in the theatre and in newspapers and magazines, he manufactured a patent axle grease called Baum's Castorine, managed a general store called Baum's Bazaar, and was even a poultry farmer.

His first two books retold traditional stories, although the last story in Mother Goose in Prose (1897) introduced the character of a young girl named Dorothy. This led him towards the creation of the land of mystery and delight called Oz, and thus, in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was born. It was an overnight success, and within two years a stage musical of the book had been produced, with Baum himself writing the lyrics and so fulfilling an earlier ambition to be a playwright. However he was forever identified with Oz by the public and as a result he wrote a further thirteen volumes about this mystical land, including Ozma of Oz (1907), The Road to Oz (1909), The Lost Princess of Oz (1917) and, finally, Glinda of Oz (1920).