Excerpts from Elaine Willingham:
On June 11, 1898, in Bloomington, Illinois, a daughter, Dorothy Louise Gage, was born to Sophie Jewel and Thomas Clarkson Gage, the brother of Maud (Gage) Baum. Maud and L. Frank Baum had four sons, and Maud had always longed for a little girl. On November 11, 1898 (five months later to the day), little Dorothy died. The records at Evergreen Memorial Cemetery state that the cause of death was "congestion of the brain." The Baums were living in nearby Chicago at the time, and Maud attended the funeral. She was overcome with grief, and upon returning home, she required medical attention.
L. Frank Baum was just putting the finishing touches on the story his wife had been urging him to put to paper for a long time. The story, as legend has it, evolved as Baum wove it for his children and their friends. It was a fairytale about a magical land and a little girl who wanted to go home. Seeing his wife so distraught after the recent funeral, and not knowing how to comfort her, he named the heroine after little Dorothy, forever immortalizing the child, and dedicated The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to Maud. ...
For nearly one hundred years, a story was handed down through generations of Baums about a niece named Dorothy who died and was immortalized in L. Frank Baum's book. However, it wasn't until the fall of 1996, when Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner, doing research on Maud's mother, Matilda Joslyn Gage (a suffragist who worked closely with Susan B. Anthony), located the grave.
Great post! This reminds me of the links I found between a poem Virginia Woolf incorporated in Mrs Dalloway and a mausoleum in Paris.
See http://milliondollarway.blogspot.com/2008/10/mrs-dalloway-in-blank-verse.html.
Posted by: Bruce Oksol | 05/18/2009 at 09:59 AM