A biography of the author of The Little House on the Prairie series
that comes to life only in the recounting of the stormy
relationship between Wilder and her daughter. Those fictionalized
accounts of Wilder's turn-of-the-century girlhood on the rural
frontier are accurate both in spirit and largely in fact. The first
part of this biography reruns those years in numbing detail, but
Miller (History/South Dakota State Univ.) picks up the pace when he
begins to examine the controversy about who really wrote the
series, Wilder or her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Rose Lane was an
established writer and editor living in San Francisco when she
began to encourage her mother to write. Wilder and her husband were
then eking out a living on a Missouri farm, and Rose saw her
mother's writing as a potential source of income. Wilder began with
a series of columns for a local newspaper and finally a manuscript
of reminiscence. By then, Rose was living on the Missouri farm and
worked closely with her mother to get the book in shape. Rose
continued to manage and guide both Wilder's career and subsequent
manuscripts - so closely, some critics have said, that they were
really Rose's books. Drawing on correspondence between mother and
daughter and other sources, Miller concludes that Wilder was a
talented writer in her own right and that her daughter acted as a
skilled editor and writing coach, although rewriting limited
sections of her mother's work. Wilder was 65 years old when her
first book was published in 1932, 90 when she died, already a
favorite of several generations of children. Her daughter died a
few years later. Rose emerges as a conflicted and intriguing
character, but this biography remains best suited for historians
and adults who are still hard-core Wilder fans. (Kirkus Reviews)
Although generations of readers of the Little House books are
familiar with Laura Ingalls Wilder's early life up through her
first years of marriage to Almanzo Wilder, few know about her adult
years. This biography focuses upon Wilder's years in Missouri from
1894 to 1957. Utilizing her unpublished autobiography, letters,
newspaper stories, and other documentary evidence, John E. Miller
fills the gaps in Wilder's autobiographical novels, showing where
they coincide with historical fact and where they depart from it.
Building upon his analysis of Wilder's activities and writings and
mining documentary sources, including various drafts of her novels,
Miller shows not only the extent to which her writings emerged
directly out of her own experiences as a girl and young woman, but
also how they were shaped and embellished by artistic intent.
Wilder depended heavily upon her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane - an
established novelist, biographer and magazine writer - for editing
and polishing her manuscripts. Without Lane's encouragement,
publishing connections and example, the novels never would have
been written. In addition to describing Wilder's apprenticeship as
a farm newspaper columnist and occasional magazine writer before
she began the production of her novels, Miller discusses Wilder's
activities on her family's Rocky Ridge farm, and as a vital citizen
in Mansfield, Missouri. Playing out her many roles as wife, mother,
chicken farmer, neighbour, churchgoer, bridge player, seamstress,
farm loan officer, political candidate, newspaper columnist and
fiction writer, Wilder led an active life for 90 years.
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