A Little House Sampler - Hardcover

"I realized that I had seen and lived it all--all the successive phases of the frontier. . . . that in my own life I represented a whole period of American history. . . . It seemed to me that my childhood had been much richer and more interesting that that of children today even with all the modern inventions and improvements. I wanted the children now to understand more about the beginnings of things, to know what is behind the things they see--what it is that made America as they know it. Then I thought of writing the story of my childhood in several volumes--an eight-volume historical novel for children covering every aspect of the American frontier."--Laura Ingalls Wilder on the evolution of her "Little House" books--Laura Ingalls Wilder

Beloved by generations of readers for the books that inspired the popular television series "Little House on the Prairie," Laura Ingalls Wilder was the mother of Rose Wilder Lane, famous in the 1920s and '30s and now being rediscovered as the author of such novels as "Free Land" and "Old Home Town. "It was Rose who encouraged Laura to begin her writing career when she was in her sixties. William T. Anderson has brought together dozens of their autobiographical writings from old newspapers and magazines, and has included some material never before published, in "A Little House Sampler." Arranged chronologically, with introductions by Anderson, these articles, short stories, essays, and poems tell the story of Laura's life from her pioneer girlhood in Wisconsin to her old age, when admirers beat a path to the door of her Missouri farmhouse. Rose's life unfolds in these pages as she describes her early memories of Dakota Territory, her departure from the family farm in the Ozarks to pursue a big-city career, and her later literary use of the old home place. As the generations pass in the "Sampler," the topics change from log cabins to English-style Ozark cottages, from covered wagons to Buicks, from feeding chickens to writing for the "Country Gentleman" -- but always they reveal the individual viewpoints of two strong-minded, high-spirited women.