Wilder, Laura Ingalls

Wilder, Laura Ingalls, 1867–1957, American author of the classic Little House series of children's books, b. Pepin, Wisc. She and her pioneer family traveled (1869–79) throughout the Midwest by covered wagon, settling (1880) in the Dakota Territory. She became a rural schoolteacher at 15, married (1885) Almanzo Wilder, and with him moved (1894) to a farm in the Missouri Ozarks. She began writing in her forties and, encouraged by her daughter, the writer Rose Lane, Wilder recorded tales of her childhood. The resulting novels, lively accounts of a loving, challenging, hardscrabble pioneer life, began with Little House in the Big Woods (1932), published when she was 65. Extremely popular, the series came to include Farmer Boy (1933), Little House on the Prairie (1935), On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937), By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939), The Long Winter (1940), Little Town on the Prairie (1941), These Happy Golden Years (1943), and The First Four Years (1971). Translated into some 40 languages, they were also the basis of a successful television series (1974–82).

See W. Anderson, ed., A Little House Sampler (1988) and A Little House Reader (1998); biographies by W. Anderson (1992), G. Wadsworth (1996), and J. E. Miller (1998); studies by J. Spaeth (1987), J. E. Miller (1994), V. L. Wolf (1996), A. Romines (1997), and D. M. Miller, ed. (2002).