Our Recommended Reading for Children & Young Adults and Recommended Reading for Adults articles have been popular resources for readers interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House on the Prairie. Here is a brief overview of The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

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Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Editor: William Anderson
Publisher: HarperCollins (March 8, 2016)

Synopsis:
Available for the first time and collected in one volume, the letters of one of America’s most beloved authors, Laura Ingalls Wilder—a treasure trove that offers a new and unexpected understanding of her life and work.

The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder is a vibrant, deeply personal portrait of this revered American author, illuminating her thoughts, travels, philosophies, writing career, and dealings with family, friends, and fans as never before.

This is a fresh look at the adult life of the author in her own words. Gathered from museums and archives and personal collections, the letters span over sixty years of Wilder’s life, from 1894–1956, and shed new light on Wilder’s day-to-day life. Here we see her as a businesswoman and author—including her beloved Little House books, her legendary editor, Ursula Nordstrom, and her readers—as a wife, and as a friend. In her letters, Wilder shares her philosophies, political opinions, and reminiscences of life as a frontier child. Also included are letters to her daughter, writer Rose Wilder Lane, who filled a silent role as editor and collaborator while the famous Little House books were being written.

Wilder biographer William Anderson collected and researched references throughout these letters and the result is an invaluable historical collection, tracing Wilder’s life through the final days of covered wagon travel, her life as a farm woman, a country journalist, Depression-era author, and years of fame as the writer of the Little House books. This collection is a sequel to her beloved books and a snapshot into twentieth-century living.

About Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867 in the log cabin described in Little House in the Big Woods. She and her family traveled by covered wagon across the Midwest. Later, Laura and her husband, Almanzo Wilder, made their own covered-wagon trip with their daughter, Rose, to Mansfield, Missouri. There, believing in the importance of knowing where you began in order to appreciate how far you’ve come, Laura wrote about her childhood growing up on the American frontier. For millions of readers, Laura lives on forever as the little pioneer girl in the beloved Little House books.

About the Editor: William Anderson
William Anderson (born 1952) is an American author, historian, and lecturer. He is a specialist in the subject of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her times. His interest in the American frontier began after reading Little House on the Prairie. He is a director of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri, and he lives and works as a teacher in Michigan. He has received many recognitions for his writings, including the Western History Association’s Billington Award, the Robinson award of the South Dakota State Historical Society, National Endowment for the Humanities awards, and National Council of Social Studies.

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