Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life by Pamela Smith Hill

I love the cover of this biography.  I had never seen this image before, Laura looks lovely and quite stylish.  I purchased this biography while vacationing in De Smet, South Dakota this past June.  It seemed a perfect read for our trip into the land of Laura.

This biography is not an in depth look at the details of Laura’s life, but more a look at what shaped Laura as a writer.  I was very interested that she had the idea jotted down for writing children’s’ book about her pioneer childhood back in 1902 after Pa’s death.  She saved her first foray into literature with a poem that she wrote in school.  It seems that becoming an author was a lifelong dream of Wilder’s.

Laura earned extra income as an adult writing articles on farm life for the Missouri Ruralist and other papers.  I found it interesting that she also was published in a major magazine, McCall’s, as well due to urging from her daughter Rose.

Laura and Rose had a unique relationship.  They actually both became established authors at the same time, but Rose was known on the national level, while Laura was local.  Rose pushed Laura to write and helped her when she first tried to publish her autobiography, Pioneer Girl.  Rose also helped herself to using Laura’s story from Pioneer Girl in her own adult fiction.  This caused understandable fiction in the family.  It was interesting that the biography noted that if they wouldn’t have been mother and daughter, Rose would have ended up in court due to plagiarism charges.

With Rose’s help, Laura crafted children’s books from Pioneer Girl.  Laura was a gifted writer and Rose was a gifted editor.  It was very interesting how they took a true story and fictionalized it to tell a tale.  There has been much debate about this through the years as well as on the true authorship of the books, but research has shown that Laura wrote the novels with Rose’s editorial guidance.  They had a great partnership.

Favorite quotes:           

                          

“I began to think what a wonderful childhood I had had.  I had seen the whole frontier, the woods, the Indian country of the Great Plains, the frontier towns, the building of railroads in wild, unsettled country, homesteading and farmers coming in to take possession. . . Then I understood that in my own life I represented a whole period of American history.”  - Laura Ingalls Wilder

“Did Wilder’s adolescence, spent describing people, places, and scenes for Mary, contribute to her development as first a storyteller and later a writer? “ – I’ve always wondered this myself.

“The snow was scudding low over the drifts of the white world outside the little claim shanty.  It was blowing thru the cracks in its walls and forming little piles and miniature drifts on the floor and even on the desks before which several children sat, trying to study, for this abandoned claim shanty that had served as the summer home of a homesteader on the Dakota prairies was being used a s a schoolhouse during the winter.”  - This was from a column Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in 1924.  She already had perfected her vivid descriptions that she used in her later fiction.

“Nevertheless, she struggled with the idea that her worked lacked artistry, that she wrote what sold rather than what would endure.”  Rose Wilder Lane.  I’ll admit, I’ve only read her fiction because of her mother and it lacks the artistry and enduring quality of her mother’s work.

Overall, Laura Ingalls Wilder:  A Writer’s Life is a great work on the process Wilder went through to create her classic works and the great partnership that Wilder and Lane had that allowed this work to flourish.  This is a must read for Laura Ingalls Wilder fans.

Book Source:  Purchased at the Ingalls Family Homestead in de Smet, South Dakota

Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pamela Smith Hill (editor)

Pioneer Girl is not only a great tale of an American family settling the west, but it is a must have for any fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her series of children’s classics, the Little House books.  Pioneer Girl is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s original tale written for adults.  It covers the same time period as her beloved classic novels and tells the story of the Ingalls family’s struggle as they move across the country as pioneers trying to make a better life for themselves while also answering the siren’s call to move every westward.  They travel from Wisconsin to Kansas back to Wisconsin to Minnesota to Iowa back to Minnesota and then finally to South Dakota.  The family expands from two children to five, with one lost along the way.

What is very interesting to learn upon reading this book is that there was a lot of information that was taken out of the story to make it more palatable for children.  There were also many sections that were very brief in Pioneer Girl that Wilder expanded on as she created her children’s novels.  It was very interesting to read Pioneer Girl and to see Wilder’s creative process as she fictionalized her own story and wrote it for children.  I also learned a lot more about the Ingalls family’s adventures and that life was a lot grittier than what was explained in the classic novels.  For instance, Pa actually left Iowa in the dead of night to avoid creditors.  I almost tipped over from shock when I read that.  The Ingalls family also had more help than what was explained in the original novels, especially after the grasshoppers ate their crops in Minnesota and they were left with nothing and had to take a government handout.

I loved that this autobiography was greatly researched and had extensive notes in the margins from editor Pamela Hill Smith.  These notes helped to bring more to the story and also to validate it.  They also answered many of the burning questions I’ve had since I was a child about the story.  Questions such as were there really panthers in Wisconsin (answer, probably not, more likely another large cat that was called a panther by the locals), and whey aren’t their flocks of grasshoppers eating all of our crops these days (they are extinct!).  The format of the book was great, it’s an oversized book that is more like a textbook which leaves plenty of room for the notes and wonderful pictures that are throughout.

The past ten or fifteen years, I have been distressed by the internet talk that Laura’s daughter Rose really wrote the Little House series and is the “ghost in the little house.”  I think this book can really put those rumors to rest.  The great introduction details Rose and Laura’s collaborative effort.  It also shows how Rose herself used Pioneer Girl to write her most famous novels as well as at least one published short story.  All of the Little House books as well as much of Rose’s later work were all based off of the original Pioneer Girl manuscript written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and sent to her daughter Rose to edit and find a publisher.

Overall, I found Pioneer Girl to be both a fascinating tale of one family’s survival as they settled the West as well as a great look into Laura Ingalls Wilder’s creative process as she wrote the Little House Books.  This is a must have book for Little House fans and a riveting read for anyone who is interested in the history of the pioneers.

Book Source:  I purchased this book from Amazon.  I first heard about it on NPR last December and had to wait for a while to be able to purchase it (it out of stock for a long time!).  It was a great book to read over the summer.