Hidden away since 1930, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s original autobiography reveals the true stories of her pioneering life. Some of her experiences will be familiar; some will be a surprise. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography re-introduces readers to the woman who defined the pioneer experience for millions of people around the world.Through her recollections, Wilder details the Ingalls … Ingalls family’s journey through Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, back to Minnesota, and on to Dakota Territory— sixteen years of travels, unforgettable stories, and the everyday people who became immortal through her fiction. Using additional manuscripts, diaries, and letters, editor Pamela Smith Hill adds valuable context and explores Wilder’s growth as a writer.
Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography also explores the history of the frontier that the Ingalls family traversed and the culture and life of the communities Wilder lived in. The book features over one hundred images, eight fully researched maps, and hundreds of annotations based on census data and other records, newspapers of the period, and other primary documents.
Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography is a publication of the Pioneer Girl Project, which is a research and publishing program of the South Dakota State Historical Society. For more information, visit www.pioneergirlproject.org.
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Pioneer Girl is Laura Ingalls’ Wilder’s original book, with her own correctoions. This book is the one on which the “Little House” books is based and reflects Laura’s own work before her daughter Lane did her editing. There are photos of families, towns and rough drafts. Laura was qite a gifted writer, even before the edits. For example, she uses language such as “fevered drought” to describe the weather, and the reader can feel the heat! Unlike the books that are derived from it, “Pioneer Girl” was challenging to find, but definitely worth the effort and money. I read this slowly, savoring a few pages each day. It is an inspiring, heartwarming and informative book.
This was a hard book to rate. It’s part nonfiction history, part fiction, and part how-to-write-memoir. I felt as though I was reading three books in one. This made it a little hard to follow at times, a little hard to slog through all the historical notations, though I love history and really wanted to know more about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s real life story. I got it.
This book takes her rough draft of her own life story, so basically an autobiography, and it gives both historical references as to what really happened when her memory failed her and also remarks of how she changed things in her fictionalized Little House series. Though the original rough draft had absolutely no breaks, thankfully, this autobiography breaks sections of her life roughly corresponding to each of her books.
I enjoyed most of it – except for the chilling story that was added and almost gave me nightmares. I’m so glad it wasn’t used in the juvenile fiction series or it would have scarred me as a young girl. I will hesitatingly recommend it for history lovers and true fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder who are willing to take a long time to find out her true history.
Favorite quotes:
I was surprised to find out how much Laura’s (always called Wilder) daughter Rose was involved in her writing process. “Such fictionalized ‘true stories’ led Lane to more prestigius, nonfiction assignments about the lives of famous men – Charlie Chaplin, Henry Ford, and Jack London.” London’s widow and sister highly disaproved of the artistic liberties she took for his biography: “’What Jack London himself wrote about his own life is mixed with fiction,’ his sister told Lane. ‘But you are supposed to be writing his biography’” (p.xxxi).
“As a writer, Wilder had clearly moved from memoirist to novelist and understood how to manipulate the raw material in Pioneer Girl to create stronger, more memorable fiction” (p.liv).
“But as Wilder transformed her original material into fiction for young readers, she grew both as a writer and ultimately as an artist, creating dynamic characters, building more suspenseful stories, and manipulating her themes more masterfully. Lane’s great literary gift to her mother may not have been in the days, weeks, months, and years shes spent editing first Pioneer Girl and then eight of Wilder’s novels; instead, her great gift may have been in steering Wilder toward young readers in the first place…” (p.lv).
“More importantly, however, this draft of Pioneer Girl takes modern readers closer to Wilder’s unique and personal voice… Her voice is intimate, conversational, and unguarded. Readingthis transcript of Wilder’s handwritten draft is perhaps as close as modern readers can get to the experience of hearing the author’s life story in her own words” (p. lix).
For some reason, the last words of the Conclusion made me tear up. Perhaps because this is my buried dream of my own work: “It has taken more than eighty years, but Pioneer Girl is finally finding an audience, although that audience is now far larger than Wilder could have envisoned when she created an improvised writing den at the Rock House, opened that first Fifty Fifty tablet, and began writing the story only she could tell” (p.329).
(I won this book in a giveaway. I was not compensated for this review. All opinions are my own, as was my decision to write a review.)
My very first concrete memories of chapter books were those in the Little House series. I remember longingly visiting the boxed set in its little slipcover every time we stopped in a book store. My father didn’t have a lot of money to spare and this was a luxury even a small child could understand. At the mall with my grandparents one time, my Gramp caught me sitting beside the children’s shelves with the cellophane-wrapped set on my lap, looking it over hungrily for probably the hundredth time in my young life. He asked me if I’d like it and I looked at him in astonishment, nodding. He asked if I would read them all, every page, and again I nodded, mute with awe at the prospect. He purchased that set for me and I made good on my promise to read them all. I devoured them, cover to cover, and then started over again from the beginning immediately. I read that series at least twice a year until I was in high school. Even since then, I have revisited my old friends every few years, and it is like coming home every time.
Getting my hands on this book and finally learning Laura’s real story was such a treat. I knew her children’s series was somewhat fictionalized and softened for young minds. There were many things the real Laura encountered that would be unsuitable for an immature audience, though it wasn’t presented distastefully in Pioneer Girl at all. I found it fascinating to discover where, how, and why she fictionalized parts of her story.
As for the annotations, they are plentiful. You can tell deep and extensive research was conducted to verify, and in some cases, correct what Laura remembers of her early life. There are notes on every imaginable topic, from background on people and places Laura mentions, the history of music she recalls, to scientific facts on weather, flora, and fauna. I didn’t read every single one of them, but focused on those that were of interest to me personally. I know that some reviews were critical of the sheer volume of annotations and how they weren’t all interesting to read about, but I don’t think there was any need to delve into expanded detail when you weren’t compelled to do so. I felt the notes were really there as a benefit to a reader wishing to know more when more was available.
One final thought as, in current American society, Laura Ingalls Wilder has come under scrutiny and criticism. If people would take the time read Laura’s own words and reflections, as well as the history of her writing this series and conversing with her daughter as they waded through all of the memories in the process, it is plain to see that Laura was aware that certain things which were said and done were not socially acceptable any longer. Some she changed for the sake of this, but others she felt best left alone because they reflected her honest childlike perceptions and thoughts, not intended in a disrespectful way at all. Later in the book, in the conclusion, we can see Laura’s attempt to be sensitive to cultural shifts while remaining honest about history:
“In Wilder’s view, her daughter did not fully grasp the literary significance of historical and cultural context in the ongoing series and had made editorial suggestions that were ‘all wrong….Remember this was a little more than 60 years ago,’ Wilder admonished Lane. ‘Take your stand there. What girls would do now had no bearing whatever. This is a true story and supposed to show a different (almost) civilization.’ … ‘After all,’ she wrote Lane, ‘even though these books must be made fit for children to read, they must also be true to history….I have given you a true picture of the times and the place and the people. Please don’t blur it.'”
If you are a fan of the Little House books, a history buff, or even just want to take a clear and educated stance on the propriety of Laura Ingalls Wilder through modern mindsets, I highly recommend this book.