Johann Rudolf Wyss was born in Bern, Switzerland on March 13, 1781. He was the son of a pastor who entertained young Johann and his brothers at bedtime with adventure tales of a shipwrecked preacher and his family.
Johann had a fine education at several German universities, and in 1806 he became a professor at the University of Bern and also its head librarian. But Professor Wyss never lost his love of literature. This led to his collecting and editing Swiss folk stories and to his writing of the Swiss national anthem. But it wasn’t until 1813 that Johann Wyss gained worldwide fame when he wrote, edited, and published his father’s bedtime stories under the title of The Shipwrecked Preacher and His Family: An Instructional Book for Children and Their Friends in City or Country. This was later to be shortened to the now famous Swiss Family Robinson.
Immediately after its publication, The Swiss Family Robinson was translated into many languages, including English. Over the years, it has become one of the most popular books for generations of European and American children-a popularity which Wyss lived to see and enjoy until his death in 1830.
Lyman Frank Baum was born on May 15, 1856, in Chittenango, New York. He began his writing career as a teenage reporter for the New York World. Within two years, he was the publisher of a small town newspaper in Pennsylvania.
As a young man, Baum also acted in road companies and wrote plays. One of his musical comedies was produced in New York. He returned to journalism in 1880. Lyman Baum married and had four sons. He settled in Chicago where he founded a trade journal, which helped him to support his family while he continued writing fiction.
The Wizard of Oz, which was first published in 1900, became so popular among its readers that Baum wrote thirteen sequels to the original story. In addition, he wrote books for girls under the pen name of Edith Van Dyne. L. Frank Baum died in 1919.
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