Remembering Laura Ingalls Wilder

On my eighth birthday, my aunt gave me a present of Little House in the Big Woods by the American author Laura Ingalls Wilder. This was the beginning of a tradition for the next few years, when my aunt would give me another title in the Little House series on my birthday, and my grandparents might add one at Christmas.

I loved to read about Laura's life on the American frontier. The books are semi-autobiographical and cover Laura's childhood up to the first years of her married life. Laura's days were so different from mine and held a fascination for me. I was with her when she walked bare-foot through the creek and shuddered when she subsequently found leeches hanging on her legs. I felt cold when she had to get up in the winter to an unheated house and wash in ice cold water. One morning she even woke up and found she was covered by an extra blanket in the shape of a layer of snow, which had fallen through gaps in the roof during the night.

In one of the books Laura is told that a neighbour's daughter got married the day before and Laura can barely believe this, because this girl is only thirteen years of age, similar to Laura's own. Then there were the frequent moves the family undertook, since her parents were true pioneers. Just like Laura, I felt sorry for Jack, the little dog, who was not allowed to travel in the covered wagon, but had to run underneath between the wheels. And of course, there were the little jealousies between Laura and her older sister Mary – I understood them only too well, regardless of the fact that in my family I am the older sister.

Laura Ingalls Wilder can be remembered this month. She was born in the state of Wisconsin. In the course of her childhood, the family lived in Kansas, South Dakota and Minnesota, before Laura married Almanzo Wilder at the age of eighteen and settled in Missouri. She started writing the Little House series in 1932 to preserve the memories of a time that was then already changing rapidly. Never had she anticipated the success her books would achieve. 

She based them on her life, but changed some events and the chronology. She describes growing up with her three sisters (one older and two younger), but leaves out the birth and death of her baby brother. Laura Ingalls Wilder also wrote newspaper articles, and in 1915 she sent letters to her husband from a stay with her daughter Rose in San Francisco. These were published under the title “West from home”. Rose was born in 1886. A few years later Laura and Almanzo also had a son, but he died two weeks after his birth, an event Laura never spoke about. Laura Ingalls Wilder was a very active and independent person. Her books, although written in a simple style, are important documents, describing the lives of a pioneer family in the American mid-west of the nineteenth century.

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