Jul 31
2012The Wizard of Oz at the Glasgow Britannia Panoptican
The creator of The Wizard of Oz, Lyman Frank Baum, was born in 1856 in Chittenango in upstate New York, the son of a wealthy business man and investor who had made his fortune in Pennsylvania oil. Throughout his life he would have a number of careers, including as a newspaper journalist and as a playwright and actor working in theatres that Baum’s father owned; he also managed a fancy goods store known as ‘Baum’s Bazar’ in South Dakota, and worked as a travelling salesman for a china and glass company. In his spare time, Baum made up fantastic stories to entertain his children and these were so good that his wife Maud encouraged him to write them down. He succeeded in getting a number of his books for children published the most successful of which, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made its first appearance in print in 1900.