The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum

The Real Wizard of Oz is the story of the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum. He was always trying a new, outlandish business venture—a store full of exotic knick-knacks in the 1890 South Dakota...a touring acting company...an early film production company—and his businesses always failed. Then he created The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and a franchise was born.

Quotes from the book:

“It would become a painful truth that when Baum stopped trying so hard, success came to him.”

“He (Baum) couldn't have written such a wise story so full of complex ideas as well as simple ones if he hadn't suffered and strived for so many years...His experiences as a child and as a man, his extensive reading through which he'd absorbed the oldest archetypes from folktales, had all jumbled together in his mind to make a brilliant cocktail, which surfaced intuitively as this brilliant, hyperreal story.”

“In the middle of writing a story, Baum sometimes fell into black moods. He would complain to Maud that ‘my characters just won't do what I want them to.' He learned that in order to finish a story, he had to let go and stop trying to force his characters to obey him; if he just let them do as they pleased, they would find their story themselves.”