Thus in Oz, different races (the Munchkins in the East, the Winkies in the West, and the Quadlings in the South) mingle democratically, and war is the ultimate ill. Army justified its genocidal attitudes toward many remaining Native American tribes. * In Baum’s formative years, both biographers remind us, the author would have heard much debate about the rise of robber barons (Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller), Reconstruction, the new energies of spiritualists, and the Manifest Destiny by which the U.S. As a young man, he opened a bazaar, sold china door-to-door, helped manage his father’s company, and edited The Show Window, a trade journal instructing storeowners in the art of luring customers with “window dressing.” The Baum family home, an idyllic spot known as “Rose Lawn,” was bounded by a plank road that led merchants to the Erie Canal. He told his sisters he would write “a great novel that should bring me fame.”īut he also reveled in newfangled inventions like the printing press (which, as a teenager, he used to put out a literary journal) and, later, bicycles, Model Ts, and movies.

A dreamy, sickly child, Baum devoured the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. Born in 1856, he grew up in the bustling canal town of Syracuse, N.Y., after his father made money in the oil fields. He was poised at the crossroads of his era-swept up in burgeoning feminism, the acceleration of new technologies, and the rise of huckster salesmanship. Schwartz’s Finding Oz and Rebecca Loncraine’s The Real Wizard of Oz-released in conjunction with the 70 th anniversary of the iconic MGM film-show that Baum was uniquely suited for this task.

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