Pioneer Girl Perspectives
Subtitle: Exploring Laura Ingalls Wilder
Publisher: South Dakota Historical Society Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 277
ISBN-13: 9781941813089
Subjects: Women authors; Authors, american; Authors, biography
Description: Laura Ingalls Wilder finished her autobiography, Pioneer Girl, in 1930 when she was sixty-three years old. Throughout the 1930s and into the early 1940s, she drew upon her original manuscript to write a successful series of books for young readers. Wilder's vision of life on the American frontier in the last half of the nineteenth century continues to draw new generations of readers to her Little House books. Editor Nancy Tystad Koupal has collected essays from noted scholars of Wilder's life and work that explore the themes and genesis of Wilder's writings. The collection sheds new light on the story behind Wilder's original manuscript and examines the ways in which the author and her daughter and editor, Rose Wilder Lane, worked to develop a marketable narrative. The essay contributors delve into the myths and realities of Wilder's work to discover the real lives of frontier children, the influence of time and place on both Wilder and Lane, and the role of folklore in the Little House novels. Together, the essays give readers a deeper understanding of how Wilder built and managed her story.