In the 1890s, Ingersoll Lockwood authored a series of children’s books about the escapades of his character, the young Baron Trump: Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and his Wonderful Dog Bulger, and Baron Trump’s Marvellous Underground Journey. The series followed a literary trend of the time, which had child protagonists adventuring to enchanted lands and encountering fantastic beings. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz are two famous examples of this genre.

Lockwood’s Baron is an aristocratic youth bored with his life of luxury in Castle Trump. Searching for adventure, Baron travels to Russia to discover an underground world beneath his feet. He journeys downward and finds himself lost in peculiar settings surrounded by the strange inhabitants of this new world. The stories follow his adventures and eventual struggle to find his way back to the surface he left behind.

The Baron Trump novels were obscured by the more successful children’s books of the time. Lockwood’s tall tales seemed destined for the literary dust bin, but the election of Donald Trump in 2016 renewed interest in these works due to the President’s youngest son’s name: Barron Trump. Now, back in print, the Baron Trump series is enjoying considerable interest and success.