1 option
Prairie fires : the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder / Caroline Fraser
Kislak Center for Special Collections - Schimmel Collection Schimmel 7528
Available in person
Request an item
Access options
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Fraser, Caroline, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Wilder, Laura Ingalls, 1867-1957.
- Wilder, Laura Ingalls.
- Lane, Rose Wilder, 1886-1968.
- Lane, Rose Wilder.
- Authors, American--20th century--Biography.
- Authors, American.
- Women pioneers--United States--Biography.
- Women pioneers.
- Frontier and pioneer life--United States.
- Frontier and pioneer life.
- United States.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- collective biographies.
- Penn Provenance:
- Schimmel, Caroline F. (donor) (Schimmel ####)
- Physical Description:
- xii, 625 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, 1 map ; 21 cm
- Edition:
- First Picador edition.
- Place of Publication:
- New York : Picador, 2018
- Summary:
- Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls--the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser--the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series--masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder's biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books. The Little House books, for all the hardships they describe, are paeans to the pioneer spirit, portraying it as triumphant against all odds. But Wilder's real life was harder and grittier than that, a story of relentless struggle, rootlessness, and poverty. It was only in her sixties, after losing nearly everything in the Great Depression, that she turned to children's books, recasting her hardscrabble childhood as a celebratory vision of homesteading - and achieving fame and fortune in the process, in one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches episodes in American letters. Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder's dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day. -- from dust jacket.
- Contents:
- Part I: The pioneer
- Maiden rock
- Indian summers
- Crying hard times
- God hates a coward
- Don't leave the farm, boys
- Part II: The exile
- A world made
- As a farm woman thinks
- The absent ones
- Pioneer girl
- Part III: The dream
- A ruined country
- Dusty old dust
- We are all here
- Sunshine and shadow
- There is gold in the farm.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 517-602) and index.
- 2018 Pulitzer Prize for biography.
- Local Notes:
- Schimmel 7528: Presented to the Penn Libraries in 2024 by Caroline F. Schimmel. Author's autograph on title page.
- ISBN:
- 1250182484
- 9781250182487
- OCLC:
- 1018078224
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.