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| Matilda Joslyn Gage |
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| Maud Gage Baum |
I lay much of the blame at the feet of Baum’s eldest son, Frank Joslyn Baum, and the biography of his father he co-authored, To Please a Child. But Frank J.’s not the only culprit to perpetuate balderdash surrounding the life of L. Frank Baum. A lot of false information has been repeated so many times, it’s taken on the stamp of authenticity. One can wear oneself out shoveling the layer of crap that’s hardened for decades. I’ve been reading distorted and erroneous information about L. Frank Baum since I was a child. Consciously checking my preconceptions at the door has gotten easier over the years. For All Wound Up, I strove to base my research, my statements, and my conclusions on solid evidence from as close to the events as I could reach.
Even so, the evidence sometimes proves slippery. Here’s an example. For decades now, scholars have claimed that L. Frank Baum’s mother-in-law, the nationally known women’s rights activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, inspired Baum to write down and publish the stories that he made up for his sons, strongly implying that Baum wouldn’t have published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz if not for Matilda. But is this view actually true?
Baum during his lifetime consistently credited his wife Maud—not his mother-in-law—with inspiring him to write down his stories. Maud Gage Baum was the founding impulse for Baum’s writing career, according to Baum himself.
Words direct from the horse’s mouth should be definitive, right? Maybe.
Baum was a jokester, a storyteller, a crowd-pleaser, and sometimes a downright liar, which complicates the job of squashing those hanging Munchkins. Maybe Baum wasn’t telling the truth about who inspired him to write his stories down. Maybe he wanted to flatter his wife. Maybe he wanted to simplify the story for publicity. But as far as I know, Baum never credited his mother-in-law Matilda.
How did Matilda become a candidate in the first place? In 1939, two decades after Baum’s death, Maud directly contradicted her husband’s statements when she told a reporter that her mother Matilda was the person who urged Baum to write his stories down. It's a credible claim. Matilda actively—even vehemently—encouraged another of her daughters to write, so perhaps she encouraged Baum as well.
Can we trust Maud’s memories of decades past? Not always. In interviews long after Baum died, Maud occasionally got facts wrong. But I’d think she would have known whether she or her mother ignited her husband's internationally famous writing career. In giving her mother Matilda the credit, was Maud correcting Baum's version of events? Or was she, perhaps, simply shy of publicly claiming credit for herself?
Who are we to believe? Who spurred Baum’s writing career—his wife Maud or his mother-in-law Matilda?
During the 1890s, when Baum’s career of writing for children began, Matilda made long visits to the Baum household. She spent her last days in the Baum’s Chicago home and died there in 1898. Both Maud and Matilda were in the right place at the right time. Both mother and daughter may have voiced a shared opinion on what Baum should do with the stories he made up, especially if they were in the room at the same time and if the encouragement took place on more than one occasion.
I doubt we’ll ever know for certain. At this point, I think the most reasonable view is that both Maud and Matilda encouraged Baum to write. That’s the stance I took in All Wound Up.
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All Wound Up: The Making of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.
Notes
Michael Patrick Hearn, The Annotated Wizard of Oz (second edition), New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, xxvii; Sally Roesch Wagner, The Wonderful Mother of Oz, Fayetteville, NY: Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, 2003; Angelica Shirley Carpenter, Born Criminal, Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2018, 187; "Weaver of Fairy Dreams Here; 'Tik-Tok' Originator in Town," San Francisco (CA) Examiner, 19 April 1913; "Composers and Librettists of Next Week's Light Operas," Indianapolis (IN) News, 6 September 1913, 11; Teet Carle, “Writer of 'Oz' Books Once Lived in S. D.,” Daily Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, SD), 25 June 1939, 14; Maud Gage Baum, letter to Sgt. Jack Stone [sic, Snow], 21 June 1943, TS; Matilda Joslyn Gage, letter to Helen L. Gage, 11 February 1895; "Matilda Joslyn Gage Dead," Chicago (IL) Tribune, 18 March 1898.
Copyright © 2026 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
