L. Frank Baum

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Picture missing the ball and chain attached to silver shoes.


Lyman (long for "L.") Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American author, best known for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: a work so popular that, in fact, he was chained to the series and wrote Oz book after Oz book while longing to write anything else. Which helps explain what a Continuity Snarl the Oz books are. Before being utterly trapped by Oz, he wrote a number of other works, such as The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.

Works by L. Frank Baum with their own trope pages include:

Other works by L. Frank Baum provide examples of:

  • Cameo Prop: Baum died before MGM's version of The Wizard of Oz was filmed, but, in a remarkable coincidence, Frank Morgan as Professor Marvel wore a secondhand coat that turned out to have belonged to the author. (It's true; Snopes confirms it.)
  • Cloudcuckooland: A lot of his fictional countries, but especially Mo in The Magical Monarch of Mo. For point of reference, this is a place where the treatment for sore throat is to remove a person's neck, turn it inside out, put it out to cure, turn it right-side-in again, and put the person's neck back. You can also get out of a deep pit by pushing the side so hard it flips the pit upside-down so you're at the top, not the bottom.
  • Level Ate
  • The Mirror Shows Your True Self: In Queen Zixi of Ix, Queen Zixi can only make herself look beautiful to others because of this trope. Her reflection shows her true age, which is considerable.
  • Offered the Crown: In Queen Zixi of Ix, Bud is offered the crown after the king dies and the laws decree that the forty-seventh person to pass through Nole's eastern gate at sunrise is the new monarch.
  • Public Domain Character: Santa Claus.
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Queen Zixi of Ix.
  • Santa Claus: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is a partial Trope Codifier for some of our modern Santa mythos.
  • Vain Sorceress: Queen Zixi of Ix.
  • Wacky Wayside Tribe: The Oz books in particular are loaded with them.