Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books

by Christine Woodside

Overview

This myth-busting book finally reveals the true story behind the beloved children's classics.

Generations of children have fallen in love with the pioneer saga of the Ingalls family, of Pa and Ma, Laura and her sisters, and their loyal dog, Jack. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books have taught millions of Americans about frontier life, giving inspiration to many and in the process becoming icons of our national identity. Yet few realize that this cherished bestselling series wandered far from the actual history of the Ingalls family and from what Laura herself understood to be central truths about pioneer life.

In this groundbreaking narrative of literary detection, Christine Woodside reveals for the first time the full extent of the collaboration between Laura and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Rose hated farming and fled the family homestead as an adolescent, eventually becoming a nationally prominent magazine writer, biographer of Herbert Hoover, and successful novelist, who shared the political values of Ayn Rand and became mentor to Roger Lea MacBride, the second Libertarian presidential candidate. Drawing on original manuscripts and letters, Woodside shows how Rose reshaped her mother's story into a series of heroic tales that rebutted the policies of the New Deal. Their secret collaboration would lead in time to their estrangement. A fascinating look at the relationship between two strong-willed women, Libertarians on the Prairie is also the deconstruction of an American myth.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628726565
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Pages:	292
Sales rank:	1,021,030
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Christine Woodside is a writer and the editor of the journal Appalachia. She writes about the history of ordinary Americans and their clashes with nature. She has nourished a fascination with the Little House books since she was a girl. As a teenager, she applied for a summer job at the Laura Ingalls Wilder farmhouse in Mansfield, Missouri—but, residing in New Jersey, failed to impress the curator. She now lives in Deep River, Connecticut, with her husband.

Table of Contents

Foreword Stephen Heuser ix

Preface to the Paperback Edition xi

Note to the Reader xiii

Introduction: Irene Lichty Turns Me Down xv

Part I Outsiders

1 Laura (1867-1885) 3

2 Rose and Laura (1886-1920) 13

Part II The Family Business

3 The Albanian Inspiration 31

4 The Writers' Colony and the Crash 45

5 The Big American Novel 64

6 The Break-Up 83

Part III The Estrangement

7 The Hard Winter 111

8 Libertarians in Connecticut 124

9 Freedom 137

10 Two Legacies 154

Part IV Literature as Politics

11 Roger, Rose's Libertarian Legacy 175

12 What We Want 189

Acknowledgments 203

Appendix I Paper Movements: Tracing Two Sets of Documents 206

Appendix II Notes on the Drafting of the Little House Books 211

Notes 219

Bibliography 244

Index 252

Editorial Reviews

2016-06-21
How a champion of Ayn Rand shaped the Little House series.Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books are a publishing phenomenon, with about 60 million copies sold since their inception in 1932. Journalist and editor Woodside (Energy Independence: Your Everyday Guide to Reducing Fuel Consumption, 2008, etc.) was among many young readers obsessed with the series and its author: "an urge to know the real Laura gripped me," writes the author, who for 40 years read everything she could find about her. Among those books was William Holtz's The Ghost in the Little House (1993), a biography of Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's daughter, which revealed that Rose "was a very important quiet partner" in writing the series, which she informed with her conservative political views. His disclosure met with anger from Laura's fans, exhibited in such acts as anonymous phone calls berating him for sullying Laura's reputation. Wilder historian William Anderson published scholarly articles drawing the same conclusion. Woodside has examined family papers that support those findings. Although she elaborates on both points, she does not offer a substantially new view of either woman, and it's likely that readers are already aware that the books idealized prairie life and the fortitude of the pioneers. Rose was a successful journalist, novelist, and biographer (of Charlie Chaplin, Henry Ford, and Herbert Hoover) by the time she began work on her mother's story. She had a literary agent and strong publishing connections, but, as Woodside reiterates, although she was well-paid, she was always in debt. The Little House series, she believed, would fill her depleted bank account. The collaboration, however, exacerbated a difficult relationship. As Woodside portrays her, Rose was unhappy, often depressed, and envious of her mother's increasing fame. The two, though, shared a hatred of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, looked for ways to avoid paying income taxes, and frequently extolled the virtues of capitalism. A book for die-hard Little House fans.

Kirkus Reviews

"Woodside's contribution to the myriad books and scholarly articles about the dysfunctional relationship between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, is the result of four decades of exhaustive research. . . . The more fascinating details for readers are those revolving around the strange yet intense relationship between mother and daughter, fraught with resentments and jealousy, yet ultimately steadfast, and certainly productive." —Booklist

"A book for die-hard Little House fans." —Kirkus

"Illuminating . . . Iconoclastic . . . Solidly supports the conclusion that the younger woman [Rose Wilder Lane] was the primary mastermind behind the literary classics." —Book Page

"Myth-busting . . . Woodside masterfully captures the behind-the-scenes story of two strong-willed women locked in an uneasy, but interdependent, enterprise." —Shoreline Times

"New scholarship on Wilder tracks how her books may have been deliberately engineered to fuel the limited-government movement. In a just published work, Libertarians on the Prairie, Christine Woodside fleshes out earlier arguments that Wilder's only child, Rose Wilder Lane, edited the Little House series to reflect her own political leanings." —Boston Globe

"Woodside's book also shines light on the political views of Wilder and her secret collaborator that were below the surface of the Little House series." —History Channel

"Woodside's book is thoroughly researched and leaves one pondering how the Little House books would be different if Lane didn't have such a hand in her mother's books." —The Post Star

"Libertarians on the Prairie is a fascinating expose; of the ideological underpinnings of one of America's best-loved stories. Who knew that the Laura Ingalls Wilder franchise was actually political propaganda?" —Jane Mayer, staff writer, The New Yorker magazine, and author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

"This is a beautiful piece of writing. Christine Woodside does an admirable job describing the intense concept of self-reliance which permeated the lives and literature of Wilder and Lane. This book is a must for anyone devoted to the Little House books and their history." —William Anderson, author of Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography and The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder

"The narrative of the Little House books' creation has been a fragmented one until now. Christine Woodside's fresh perspective brings together the pieces of a remarkable literary and cultural history and gives us new insights on the two women who began with a children's story and ended up inspiring a nation." —Wendy McClure, author of The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie

"Christine Woodside has completely changed my view of the Little House on the Prairie. Her encyclopedic scholarship, meticulous assembly of documentary sources, clear narrative writing style, and frank revelations about Rose's FDR-hating politics credibly demonstrate the connection between the Little House books and the libertarian fantasy of noble and government-free prairie self-sufficiency. Woodside has written the classic history of the classic series." —Mark Kramer, founding director of Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism at Harvard University

"Woodside's contribution to the myriad books and scholarly articles about the dysfunctional relationship between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, is the result of four decades of exhaustive research. . . . The more fascinating details for readers are those revolving around the strange yet intense relationship between mother and daughter, fraught with resentments and jealousy, yet ultimately steadfast, and certainly productive." —Booklist

"A book for die-hard Little House fans." —Kirkus

"Illuminating . . . Iconoclastic . . . Solidly supports the conclusion that the younger woman [Rose Wilder Lane] was the primary mastermind behind the literary classics." —Book Page

"Myth-busting . . . Woodside masterfully captures the behind-the-scenes story of two strong-willed women locked in an uneasy, but interdependent, enterprise." —Shoreline Times

"New scholarship on Wilder tracks how her books may have been deliberately engineered to fuel the limited-government movement. In a just published work, Libertarians on the Prairie, Christine Woodside fleshes out earlier arguments that Wilder's only child, Rose Wilder Lane, edited the Little House series to reflect her own political leanings." —Boston Globe

"Woodside's book also shines light on the political views of Wilder and her secret collaborator that were below the surface of the Little House series." —History Channel

"Woodside's book is thoroughly researched and leaves one pondering how the Little House books would be different if Lane didn't have such a hand in her mother's books." —The Post Star

"Libertarians on the Prairie is a fascinating expose; of the ideological underpinnings of one of America's best-loved stories. Who knew that the Laura Ingalls Wilder franchise was actually political propaganda?" —Jane Mayer, staff writer, The New Yorker magazine, and author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

"This is a beautiful piece of writing. Christine Woodside does an admirable job describing the intense concept of self-reliance which permeated the lives and literature of Wilder and Lane. This book is a must for anyone devoted to the Little House books and their history." —William Anderson, author of Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography and The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder

"The narrative of the Little House books' creation has been a fragmented one until now. Christine Woodside's fresh perspective brings together the pieces of a remarkable literary and cultural history and gives us new insights on the two women who began with a children's story and ended up inspiring a nation." —Wendy McClure, author of The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie

"Christine Woodside has completely changed my view of the Little House on the Prairie. Her encyclopedic scholarship, meticulous assembly of documentary sources, clear narrative writing style, and frank revelations about Rose's FDR-hating politics credibly demonstrate the connection between the Little House books and the libertarian fantasy of noble and government-free prairie self-sufficiency. Woodside has written the classic history of the classic series." —Mark Kramer, founding director of Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism at Harvard University

From the Publisher