Daring Twins

Origin
The Daring Twins: A Story for Young Folk is a mystery novel for juvenile readers by L. Frank Baum. It was published in 1911. Unusually, the book was released under the author's name; Baum's other non-fantasy juveniles appeared under one or another of his many pseudonyms.

The story of The Daring Twins centers on a family of five orphaned children, two of whom are twins. Phil Daring works in a bank; when he is falsely suspected of thievery, his twin sister Phoebe, a spirited 16-year-old, seizes the initiative in proving Phil's innocence.

The Daring children's late father had been in the sugar business; he was ruined financially when he refused to join a monopoly, believing that trusts and monopolies are "unjust and morally unlawful" — an interesting glimpse into Baum's values.

Baum was simultaneously writing a similar story, of a brave girl defending and supporting her brother, in his 1911 novel The Flying Girl, and he would re-use the plot of a girl with an unjustly-accused family member in his 1916 book Mary Louise, which launched yet another serial.

The Daring Twins was projected as the first installment in a series of juvenile novels. A sequel, Phoebe Daring, appeared in 1912. The extant evidence shows that Baum had further fictional plans for the Daring family, beyond the two books that were published. Indeed, his surviving correspondence shows that Baum was thinking of a long series of books involving Phil and Phoebe Daring's younger siblings, and then a second generation of Darings. Among the papers and records left after his 1919 death was a file labelled with the title Phoebe Daring, Conspirator. Baum's letters to his publisher, Reilly & Britton, mention another title, variously Phil Daring's Experiment or The Daring Twins' Experiment. Nothing of these two books has survived, as far as is now known.

Apparently, limited sales of the first two Daring Twins titles failed to justify the series' continuation.