Description:
Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote stories that have defined the American frontier for generations of readers. As both author and character in her own books, she became one of the most famous figures in American children's literature. Her famous Little House on the Prairie series, based on her childhood in Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, and South Dakota, blended memoir and fiction into a vivid depiction of nineteenth-century settler life that continues to shape many Americans' understanding of the country's past. Poised between fiction and fact, literature and history, Wilder's life is a fascinating window on the American West.
Placing Wilder's life and work in historical context, and including previously unpublished material from the Wilder archives, Sallie Ketcham introduces students to domestic frontier life, the conflict between Native Americans and infringing white populations, and the West in public memory and imagination.
Review Quotes:
Reviewer #1: I don't think the book is particularly timely, but I don't think it needs to be, since the Little House books are such classics...I'd recommend publication if the author follows my suggestions, especially about situating the biography in the larger historical context. I could imagine other instructors using it if it is better contextualized - along the lines of fiction vs. reality.
Reviewer #2:
The author has added an emphasis on domestic history to the proposal--a welcome addition...For a course on western women's literature or history, this would serve nicely as one of many texts; for a course devoted to the writing of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the book would be appropriate as the main text...I believe there is always a market for solid, contextual biographies...The author's new emphasis on domesticity as gendered role of Manifest Destiny elevates the book above the standard issue biography and makes it much more attractive for use in a college/university course.
Review #3
Although the book might be written and marketed with college undergraduates as the intended primary audience, its secondary audience could be sizable, given LIW's continuing presence in American popular culture. In my view, those in this "secondary audience" - LIW fans, those who read her books when they were much younger and are feeling nostalgic, some American history "buffs" - would be voluntary readers (buying and reading the book of their own volition and interest) rather than conscripted readers (students who have been assigned to read the book as a required text). Finally, the book (like many on LIW) has the potential to attract an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary academic and scholarly audience from American literature, Western history, women's and gender studies, and potentially rural, community, and/or economic history.....For a U.S. survey course that uses a standard textbook, this book would be a supplemental text. For a women's history or Western history course, this book would be one of several books - perhaps assigned for 1-2 weeks during a semester or trimester. For a course that examines Laura Ingalls Wilder (perhaps an interdisciplinary English and History or American Studies course), this book might serve as a main text. ...
I recommend this book for publication. Although some changes were made (perhaps with the above comments in mind), I still think that the proposed biography author will need to carry through the fairytale/folklore idea more clearly throughout the book, not just in the early chapters. I also think that the author might need to engage more with how LIW "lives" today as a figure in popular culture