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Katharine Rogers, a Professor Emerita of English from Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, now lives in Bethesda, Maryland. She has published many articles and books on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and, since retirement, has pursued her interests in animals and in the Oz books of L. Frank Baum. Her official website is http://members.authorsguild.net/kayrogers/
L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz
Since it was first introduced over a hundred years ago in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum's world of Oz has become one of the most enduring and beloved creations in children's literature. It has influenced numerous prominent writers and intellectuals, and become a lasting part of the culture itself.
L. Frank Baum was born in 1856 in upstate New York, the seventh child of a very successful barrel-maker and later oil producer. However, Baum's own career path was a rocky one. Beginning as an actor, Baum tried working as a traveling salesman, the editor of a small town newspaper and the publisher of a trade journal on retailing, failing to distinguish himself in any occupation. His careers either failed to provide a sufficient living for his beloved wife Maud and their children or were so exhausting as to be debilitating. In the 1890's, L. Frank Baum took the advice of his mother-in-law, suffragist leader Matilda Gage, and turned his attention to trying to sell the stories he'd been telling to his sons and their friends. After a few children's books published with varying success, he published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900 and it quickly became a bestseller and has remained so ever since.
In this first full-length adult biography of Baum, Rogers discusses some of the aspects that made his work unique and has likely contributed to Oz's long-lasting appeal, including Baum's early support of feminism and how it was reflected in his characters, his interest in Theosophy and how it took form in his books, and the celebration in his stories of traditional American values. Grounding his imaginative creations, particularly in his fourteen Oz books, in the reality of his day, Katharine M. Rogers explores the fascinating life and influences of America's greatest writer for children.
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Katharine Rogers's Summer Reading List
Evolution
by Stephen Baxter
Intellectual science fiction, takes the story of humanity from a primitive mammalian ancestor into a powerfully imagined future 300 million years from now.
The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Combines the thrills of an absorbing murder mystery with the scholarly delights of esoteric religious history and art interpretation.
Humanity
by Jonathan Glover
A Moral History of the Twentieth Century addresses the vital and baffling issue of why human beings persist in committing atrocities and how these tendencies might be moderated.
The Dream of Scipio
by Iain Pears
An intricate historical novel like his Instance of the Fingerpost, interweaves the stories of three intellectuals who lived in Provence in widely separated eras.
The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiousity Changed the World
by Jenny Uglow
Will introduce me to an unfamiliar aspect of eighteenth-century culture through the careers of a group of progressive men, brimful of ideas about science, technology, and everything else, who met in Birmingham on Mondays when the moon was full.
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