Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder (born February 7, 1867, Lake Pepin, Wisconsin, U.S.—died February 10, 1957, Mansfield, Missouri) was an American author of children’s fiction based on her own youth in the American Midwest. She is best known for her book Little House on the Prairie (1935), part of a very popular series of “Little House” books that was later adapted into a television series that ran from 1974 to 1983.

Life on the frontier

Laura Ingalls grew up in a family that moved frequently from one part of the American frontier to another. Her father, Charles, took the family by covered wagon to Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Indian Territory, and Dakota Territory. Ingalls was the second of five children; she had three sisters, Mary (the eldest), Caroline (who was named for the children’s mother), and Grace, and a brother, Charles, Jr. (“Freddy”), who died when he was nine months old. As Ingalls related in her writings as an adult, her family endured many hardships on the frontier, including the Rocky Mountain locust infestation of 1874–75, which devastated their crops during the family’s time in Minnesota.

Marriage and early writings

At age 15 Ingalls began teaching in rural schools. In 1885 she married Almanzo J. Wilder, with whom she lived from 1894 on a farm near Mansfield, Missouri. Some years later she began writing for various periodicals. She contributed to McCall’s Magazine and Country Gentleman, served as poultry editor for the St. Louis Star, and for 12 years was home editor of the Missouri Ruralist.

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“Little House” books

Prompted by her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, Wilder began writing down her childhood experiences. Her stories centered on the male unrest and female patience of pioneers in the mid-1800s and celebrated their peculiarly American spirit and independence. In 1932 she published Little House in the Big Woods, which was set in Wisconsin. After writing Farmer Boy (1933), a book about her husband’s childhood, she published Little House on the Prairie (1935), a reminiscence of her family’s stay in Indian Territory. The “Little House” books were well received by the reading public and critics alike; their warm portrayal of a life made picturesque by its very simplicity charmed generations of readers.

Wilder continued the story of her life in On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937), By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939), The Long Winter (1940), Little Town on the Prairie (1941), and These Happy Golden Years (1943). Her books remain in print. Their popularity was boosted by the success of the television series based on Wilder’s stories that debuted in 1974; it ran for nine seasons and starred Melissa Gilbert as Laura and Michael Landon and Karen Grassle as Pa and Ma Ingalls. A new series, also titled Little House on the Prairie, debuted in July 2026 on Netflix.

Wilder’s husband died in 1949 at age 92. That decade Wilder began writing an autobiographical novel about their early years as a married couple, although it is not clear that she intended to publish it. She died in 1957 at age 90.

When Rose Wilder Lane died in 1968, the manuscript of her mother’s novel was found in her belongings. It was published in 1971 as The First Four Years. Compared to the other “Little House” books, it is more somber in tone and less polished in structure and language; many fans consider it to be a “rough draft.”

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Legacy

In 2014 the South Dakota Historical Society Press issued Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, which comprised Wilder’s initial (1929–30) attempt to record her life. She and her daughter had tried unsuccessfully to publish it. The volume, which included illustrations and maps, contained many of the stories that later became fodder for Wilder’s successful chronicles of her childhood for young readers. However, the book was noted for including violent and upsetting incidents omitted from the somewhat sanitized tales for which she ultimately became known. Her correspondence between 1894 and 1956 was published as The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2016).

In 1954 the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, established the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which honored authors and illustrators whose books contributed significantly to the genre of children’s literature. Criticism about Wilder’s depictions of Native Americans and African Americans in her books led the ALSC to change the award’s name in 2018 to the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

However, the controversy was not new. Before Wilder’s death her publisher had changed some language in her books that was deemed offensive to Native people. Scholars of Wilder’s work have argued that the author’s books remain important to children’s literature and can be used to teach young readers about the perspectives of the past.