Annabel

Lyman Frank Baum (1856 -1919), better known by his pen name L. Frank Baum, was an American author chiefly known for his children's books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen novel sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a host of other works (55 novels in total, plus four "lost works," 83 short stories, over 200 poems, an unknown number of scripts and many miscellaneous writings), and made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen. Annabel: A Novel for Young Folk is a 1906 juvenile novel written by L. Frank Baum, the author famous for his series of books on the Land of Oz. The book was issued under the pen name "Suzanne Metcalf," one of Baum's various pseudonyms. Annabel was one of Baum's first efforts to write a novel for adolescent girls - who soon became one of his most important audiences. Will Carden, the novel's protagonist, is fifteen years old at the start of the story. His family has "come down" in the world: though his late father had once owned a steel mill, Will and his mother and siblings now survive by growing vegetables on a two-acre plot of land. Will is popular with the local children, especially with the five Williams siblings who live in the big house in the town of Bingham. Of the five, Mary Louise is the beauty; her twelve-year-old sister Annabel is plain in comparison, with red hair and freckles and a "pug nose." Their father owns the steel mill that succeeded the Carden mill as the town's leading employer; their mother, the snobbish Mrs. Williams, wounds Will by telling her children to avoid the lowly "vegetable boy."