For generations, the beloved “Little House” books by Laura Ingalls Wilder have carried readers back to America’s pioneering past. These classic stories of childhood on the frontier, brimming with courage, family, and adventure, have captured the hearts of millions worldwide. Join us now as we uncover the remarkable journey of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the woman who transformed her own experiences in the untamed American West into timeless tales of homesteading and discovery.
From a little log cabin in Wisconsin to a covered wagon trekking across the vast plains, Laura Ingalls Wilder lived the true American story of westward expansion. Her real-life experiences—building a home, facing challenges, and finding joy on the frontier—became the rich foundation for her beloved books, including “Pioneer Girl,” the original memoir that inspired it all. Discover how her desire to preserve an extraordinary childhood and the spirit of early America compelled her to write, creating a timeless legacy that continues to inspire readers today.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Here’s Deidre Burzer with the story. Once upon a time, 60 years ago, a little girl lived in the big woods of Wisconsin in a little gray house made of logs. So far as the little girl could see, there was only the one little house where she lived with her father and mother, her sister Mary, and baby sister Carrie.
A wagon track ran before the house, turning and twisting out of sight in the woods where the wild animals lived, but the little girl did not know where it went nor what might be at the end of it. The little girl was named Laura, and she called her father Pa and her mother Ma. This little girl was Laura Ingalls Wilder.
She was born in 1867 in Wisconsin near Lake Pepin on the Mississippi River. She grew up with the country, traversing the interior West multiple times in a covered wagon and then by train and eventually in her own automobile. With her husband Almanzo Wilder, she was a farmer specializing in poultry on their farm in the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri where they ended up when disaster after disaster drove them out of Dakota Territory in 1894. In addition to being a devoted wife to Almanzo Wilder, she was the mother to Rose Wilder Lane, but she was also a writer.
Laura began writing columns for Missouri’s agricultural newspapers in 1911 and continued for more than a decade. Her father’s death in 1902 and then her mother’s death in 1924 and her sister Mary’s death in 1928, each prompted her to go back in her mind and reassess her memories. And especially the death of Mary made her realize that her own time might be limited more than she thought. And so that prompted her to start writing, and she wanted to capture her father’s wonderful stories and her own rather incredible childhood. She started to realize in the late 1920s that she had seen it all.
Frontiersmen, Indians, cowboys, pioneers, homesteaders, railroad builders, the settlement of the West. Her life had encompassed the settlement of the West, and she wanted to tell that story. So in 1930, she purchased a big pile of Big Chief tablets that were lined, and she sharpened her pencils and she started writing. And she titled this manuscript “Pioneer Girl.” She intended it for an adult audience, and she also intended it as kind of a family memoir for her daughter Rose. So there are sections in there where it says “not for publication, just for you, just for you Rose.”
And we still have all of these notebooks today, and they have been studied very closely. So this was the beginning, the genesis of what became the “Little House Books.” By then, by 1930, Laura Ingalls Wilder published several articles in national magazines, such as “Country Gentlemen” and “Saturday Evening Post.” Rose had a literary agent in New York. Rose was a very well-known writer, and she was widely published. She had lots of fiction to her name. But as the Depression worsened, many magazines that had previously been paying Rose quite well for her fiction were no longer buying anything. They were turning to the manuscripts that they had collected in their safes and printing those because those had already been paid for. And so they did not find a home for “Pioneer Girl.” But Rose kept trying, and so she decided to pull out some of the stories from her mother’s manuscript and package those as a story for children.
And she did that, and she called it “When Grandma Was a Little Girl.” That found a little bit of success and found a publisher willing to go for it. If Laura was willing to take aspects of that story and fill it in. So Harper Brothers wanted these stories, but they wanted a lot around them.
They wanted to know how do pioneers do things. I’m sorry, “Little House in the Big Woods.”
And that was published in 1932. Laura and her daughter Rose, who was quite a strong editor and did work her editing magic on her mother’s manuscripts, probably never thought when they started on this endeavor with “Little House in the Big Woods” that this would end up being a full series of eight novels, but it was. Laura almost immediately upon publication of “Little House in the Big Woods” started getting fan mail, and they wanted to know what happened to Laura and Mary. In the meantime, while the publication process was happening, Laura turned her attention to writing a book kind of similar to “Little House in the Big Woods” about her husband Almanzo’s childhood, and that was called “Farmer Boy.” So what we see with these books is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s literary genius.
They shine through. She gave us unforgettable characters. Sometimes she changes names, but often she uses the same names. However, the entire storyline is not autobiographical. It’s based in what really happened in Laura’s life, but there are some embellishments and, of course, dialogue and all kinds of things that are necessary in a novel to keep the action moving. And you’re listening to Deidre Burzer tell the story of Laura Ingalls Wilder and how she came to be one of the most prolific writers and seller of books and stories.
Well, in the 20th century. When we come back, more of this remarkable story here on “Our American Stories.” Folks, if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America’s rich past, know that all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture, and faith, are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life. And if you can’t get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale.edu to learn more.
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