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The Little House Books, Vol. 1: Little House in the Big Woods / Farmer Boy / Little House on the Prairie / On the Banks of Plum Creek

In 1930, at the age of sixty-three, Laura Ingalls Wilder began to write of her experiences growing up on the American frontier. Born in a log cabin just after the Civil War, she “had seen and lived it all” — the wild woods, Indian country, the building of the railroads, the hardscrabble life of the homesteader, the overnight rise of towns and farms — an entire epoch in the settling of America. She found a unique form in which to tell her story, an episodic sequence of novels for young readers now loved the world over. Together the Little House books constitute a classic of children’s literature and a definitive firsthand account of the pioneer experience.

In this and a companion volume, Library of America presents all nine of the Little House books in the order in which they were published. The first four are novels of childhood, beginning with Little House in the Big Woods (1932), in which Laura Ingalls, age five, keenly experiences the turning of the year in the Wisconsin wilderness. Each season has its work and its rituals, overseen by Ma and Pa with cheerfulness and an exacting economy. Hunting, planting, harvesting, butchering — Laura learns all of these by example, and by helping her parents in any way she can. In the evenings she delights in Pa’s stories, the songs played on his fiddle, and the cozy warmth of the hearthside.

Farmer Boy (1933) tells the parallel story of Almanzo Wilder, the boy who will soon light out for the territory and eventually meet, court, and marry Laura, but who first must learn his father’s way of life on a farm in upstate New York. Little House on the Prairie (1935) takes Laura’s family from Wisconsin to Kansas, where they attempt to stake a claim despite illness, prairie fires, and uncertain encounters with Osage Indians. In On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937), the family moves to Minnesota and raises a promising crop of wheat only to lose it to a voracious swarm of grasshoppers.

These four novels, like the five that follow, are presented by Library of America without the illustrations and typographical trappings of editions designed for young readers. Here Wilder’s prose for the first time stands alone and can be seen for exactly what it is — a triumph of the American plain style. An appendix contains two little-known speeches in which Wilder discusses the craft of writing historical fiction.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 648
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781598531602
  • Genres
  • classics, childrens, american
  • Release date
  • 2012