BiblioVault - Books about Lane, Rose Wilder

Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane

Forty Years of Friendship, Letters, 1921-1960

Edited by William Holtz

University of Missouri Press, 1991

The friendship between Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane began in 1920 in the publicity office of the American Red Cross in Paris and continued until Thompson’s death in 1961. Although both women are today remembered primarily for their connections with others —Thompson as the wife of Sinclair Lewis, and Lane as the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the “Little House” books —each was remarkable in her own right.

Both women had a vital engagement with life that led them in fearless pursuit of experience. In 1939, Thompson appeared on the cover of Time, which judged her second only to Eleanor Roosevelt among influential women of the day. Typical of Lane were her travels through the mountains of Albania, the deserts of Syria, and Soviet Georgia in the 1920s and her visit as a journalist to Vietnam in 1965 at the age of seventy-eight.

The correspondence of these two talented and articulate women reveals their personal concerns, social ideas, and political/economic philosophies and how they changed over time. Their letters tell the story of the first generation of women to come of age during the twentieth century, as they tried to cope with problems that women still face today. Along with the letters themselves, Holtz has included annotations and footnotes that provide biographical information, as well as explaining personal and topical references.

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The Ghost in the Little House

A Life of Rose Wilder Lane

William Holtz

University of Missouri Press, 1995

Laura Ingalls Wilder is one of the most beloved children’s authors of all time, but William Holtz contends that she may not have been the sole author of the Little House series that bore her name. While Laura’s life did serve as the inspiration for the books, Holtz believes that her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, actually took her mother’s memoirs and refurbished them into the novels that would be read by millions. In this captivating biography, Holtz chronicles Rose’s life from childhood, to travels abroad that began at age seventeen, and finally back home to Missouri in her mid-thirties where she would fine tune her mother’s writing. Holtz does not write to expose Laura as a fraud, but instead The Ghost in the Little House explains that Laura’s books were more of a collaborative effort than anyone knew.

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Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane

Authorship, Place, Time, and Culture

John E. Miller

University of Missouri Press, 2008

The mother-daughter partnership that produced the Little House books has fascinated scholars and readers alike. Now, John E. Miller, one of America’s leading authorities on Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane, combines analyses of both women to explore this collaborative process and shows how their books reflect the authors’ distinctive views of place, time, and culture. Along the way, he addresses the two most controversial issues for Wilder/Lane aficionados: how much did Lane actually contribute to the writing of the Little House books, and what was Wilder’s real attitude toward American Indians.

Interpreting these writers in their larger historical and cultural contexts, Miller reconsiders their formidable artistic, political, and literary contributions to American cultural life in the 1930s. He looks at what was happening in 1932—from depression conditions and politics to chain stores and celebrity culture—to shed light on Wilder’s life, and he shows how actual “little houses” established ideas of home that resonated emotionally for both writers.

In considering each woman’s ties to history, Miller compares Wilder with Frederick Jackson Turner as a frontier mythmaker and examines Lane’s unpublished history of Missouri in the context of a contemporaneous project, Thomas Hart Benton’s famous Jefferson City mural. He also looks at Wilder’s Missouri Ruralist columns to assess her pre–Little House values and writing skills, and he readdresses her literary treatment of Native Americans. A final chapter shows how Wilder’s and Lane’s conservative political views found expression in their work, separating Lane’s more libertarian bent from Wilder’s focus on writing moralist children’s fiction.

These nine thoughtful essays expand the critical discussion on Wilder and Lane beyond the Little House. Miller portrays them as impassioned and dedicated writers who were deeply involved in the historical changes and political challenges of their times—and contends that questions over the books’ authorship do not do justice to either woman’s creative investment in the series. Miller demystifies the aura of nostalgia that often prevents modern readers from seeing Wilder as a real-life woman, and he depicts Lane as a kindred artistic spirit, helping readers better understand mother and daughter as both women and authors.

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The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder Lane, Literary Journalist

Edited by Amy Mattson Lauters

University of Missouri Press, 2007

Through numerous short stories, novels such as Free Land, and political writings such as “Credo,” Rose Wilder Lane forged a literary career that would be eclipsed by the shadow of her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose Little House books Lane edited. Lane’s fifty-year career in journalism has remained largely unexplored.
            This book recovers journalistic work by an American icon for whom scholarly recognition is long overdue. Amy Mattson Lauters introduces readers to Lane’s life through examples of her journalism and argues that her work and career help establish her not only as an author and political rhetorician but also as a literary journalist. Lauters has assembled a collection of rarely seen nonfiction articles that illustrate Lane’s talent as a writer of literary nonfiction, provide on-the-spot views of key moments in American cultural history, and offer sharp commentary on historical events.
            Through this collection of Lane’s journalism, dating from early work for Sunset magazine in 1918 to her final piece for Woman’s Day set in 1965 Saigon, Lauters shows how Lane infused her writing with her particular ideology of Americanism and individualism, self-reliance, and freedom from government interference, thereby offering stark commentary on her times. Lane shares her experiences as an extra in a Douglas Fairbanks movie and interviews D.W. Griffith. She reports on average American women struggling to raise a family in wartime and hikes over the Albanian mountains between the world wars. Her own maturing conservative political views provide a lens through which readers can view debates over the draft, war, and women’s citizenship during World War II, and her capstone piece brings us again into a culture torn by war, this time in Southeast Asia.
            These writings have not been available to the reading public since they first appeared. They encapsulate important moments for Lane and her times, revealing the woman behind the text, the development of her signature literary style, and her progression as a writer. Lauters’s introduction reveals the flow of Lane’s life and career, offering key insights into women’s history, the literary journalism genre, and American culture in the first half of the twentieth century.
Through these works, readers will discover a writer whose cultural identity was quintessentially American, middle class, midwestern, and simplistic—and who assumed the mantle of custodian to Americanism through women’s arts. The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder Lane traces the extraordinary relationship between one woman and American society over fifty pivotal years and offers readers a treasury of writings to enjoy and discuss.

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Writers of Conviction

The Personal Politics of Zona Gale, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Rose Wilder Lane, and Josephine Herbst

Julia C. Ehrhardt

University of Missouri Press, 2004

In Writers of Conviction, Julia C. Ehrhardt examines the literary careers of four American writers who have not received the critical attention they deserve: Zona Gale, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Rose Wilder Lane, and Josephine Herbst. For too long, popular twentieth-century female authors have been ignored by scholars—mainly because their stories were considered to lack serious political content or social commentary—despite their popularity with the general public.

Writers of Conviction reintroduces these authors to reveal a fascinating and unexplored aspect of white, middle-class, female authorship: the provocative links between each writer’s personal politics and her literary aspirations. Ehrhardt uses this innovative critical perspective to show that each woman became a writer in order to express her political beliefs to the largest possible audience. Combining feminist literary theory, women’s history, and biographical criticism, each chapter presents a compelling study of a woman’s individual journey to political consciousness and the writings that resulted from it.

Rather than discussing familiar issues—such as woman suffrage and equal rights—that usually dominate our understanding of women’s political activity in the early twentieth century as it surfaced in writings by canonical woman authors, Ehrhardt introduces readers to four lesser-known women and the political agendas they endorsed in both published and unpublished writings. In-depth analyses are presented on Gale’s support of the municipal-housekeeping movement, Fisher’s anxieties about the rise of New England tourism, Lane’s criticisms of the New Deal, and Herbst’s denunciation of the risks involved in illegal abortion. Ehrhardt offers a refreshing new perspective on Herbst’s fiction by putting sexuality rather than class at the center of the analysis.

Writers of Conviction breaks new ground byalso assessing the current critical conception of legitimate political agendas. By highlighting not only the content of their writings but also the immense popularity these women enjoyed, Ehrhardt demonstrates that an investigation of personal politics forces critics to reconsider assumptions about literary movements and provides a provocative model for twenty-first-century feminist literary criticism.

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