Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867 - 1957) was an American writer of children's books, made famous by the Little House series of books recounting her family's experiences homesteading in the late 19th century.

In the course of her early life, her family moved several times, establishing homesteads or making their lives in Wisconsin, Kansas, South Dakota , Minnesota, and finally, Missouri. Her books, aimed at young readers, provide a rather idealized picture of pioneer homesteading life. They have, over the years, become wildly popular with young readers (and others as well) and formed the basis for the Little House on the Prairie television series.

List of Little House books, with date of first publication)

• Little House in the Big Woods (1932) - life in a log cabin in 1870s Wisconsim
• Farmer Boy (1934) - Almanzo Wilder's life on a farm in 1860s New York
• Little House on the Prairie (1935) - the family's life in present day Kansas (then Indian Territory)
• On the Banks of Plum Creek (1935) - farm and town life in Minnesota in the 1870s
• On the Shores of Silver Lake (1939) - Dakota Territory late 1870s working on the railroad
• The Long Winter (1940) - the long, hard Winter of 1880-81 in Dakota Territory
• Little Town on the Prairie (1941) - the Little Town referred to is De Smet, South Dakota
• These Happy Golden Years (1943) - LIW grows up in De Smet, South Dakota
• The First Four Years (published posthumously 1971)

Bibliography

• Christine Woodside, Libertarians on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the making of the Little House Books.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pioneer Girl - an annotated autobiography edited by Pamela Smith Hill (ISBN 978-0-9845041-7-6)`
• Marta McDowell, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder - The frontier landscapes that inspired the Little House books