Laura Ingalls Wilder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Wilder's fiction, her autobiography, and her real childhood are all distinct things, but they are closely intertwined." 

Laura Ingalls Wilder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Laura Ingalls Wilder[2] (/ˈɪŋɡəlz/; February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957) was an American writer, most notably the author of the Little House series of children's novels based on her childhood in a pioneer family.[3] Her daughter, Rose, encouraged her to write and helped her to edit and publish the novels.

A popular 1974–84 TV series loosely based on the Little House books starred Melissa Gilbert as Laura.

In 1929–1930, already in her early sixties, Laura began writing her autobiography, which she titled "Pioneer Girl." At the time, it was rejected by publishers, and was never released. At Rose's urging, she then rewrote most of her stories for a different audience - children, and the Little House series was born. In 2014, the South Dakota State Historical Society published an annotated version of Wilder's autobiography.

Pioneer Girl includes stories that Laura deemed inappropriate for children, such as a man accidentally immolating himself while drunk, as well as an incident of extreme violence of a local shopkeeper against his wife, ending with the man setting their house on fire. She also describes previously unknown sides of the character of Charles. According to its publisher, "Wilder's fiction, her autobiography, and her real childhood are all distinct things, but they are closely intertwined." The book aims to explore the differences, including incidents with conflicting or non-existing accounts in one or another of the sources.

Allegations, including by biographer Professor William Holtz,^[24] have surfaced over the years that Rose was Laura's ghostwriter. Some, like Timothy Abreu of Gush Publishing, argue that Laura was an "untutored genius," relying on her mainly for some early encouragement and her connections with publishers and literary agents. Others contend that Rose took each of Laura's unpolished rough drafts in hand and completely (and silently) transformed them into the series of books we know today. The existing evidence (including ongoing correspondence between the women about the books' development, Rose's extensive diaries, and Laura's handwritten manuscripts with edit notations) shows an ongoing collaboration between two talented and headstrong women. Miller, using this record, describes varying levels of involvement by Lane. Little House in the Big Woods and These Happy Golden Years, he notes, received the least editing. “The first pages … and other large sections of [Big Woods]” he observes, “stand largely intact, indicating … from the start … [Laura’s] talent for narrative description.”^[25] Some volumes saw heavier participation by Rose^[26] while The First Four Years appears to be exclusively a Wilder work.^[27] Concludes Miller, "In the end, the lasting literary legacy remains that of the mother more than that of the daughter... Lane possessed style; Wilder had substance."^[23]