L. Frank Baum

He failed at almost every honest trade, then built a country. Actor, shopkeeper, newspaper editor, chicken breeder — all of it went under. Then children’s books: Mother Goose in prose, a life of Santa Claus, and a cyclone that would not stop. Fourteen Oz novels because the mail would not let him quit, plus dozens of other books under other names, musicals, and an early film studio that also failed. The 1939 picture ate the first book. Baum had already written a shelf, and a map that kept growing after he was gone.