June 29, 2023 • 47 mins
Who actually wrote the Little House books? For decades this question has loomed over the series. Was it Laura, a 65-year-old farm wife? Or her daughter Rose, one of the country's most successful freelance writers? But that's not the only conspiracy theory these heartwarming, cozy books have spawned. Many people also believe they are a Libertarian fantasy masquerading as tales for children. In this episode we tackle the question: how involved in the writing was Rose, really? And how much of Rose’s sometimes extreme political ideology ended up woven into Laura’s story? And if that weren't enough, we also look into whether Rose was responsible for funding the education of two of the most powerful right-wing operatives in America. While we're on the subject of politics, did Little House bankroll a failed run for President? And, finally, how did a man Laura never met, come to control the entire Little House world? We told you Rose was complicated.
Go deeper:
Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires
Visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Historic Homes in De Smet, South Dakota
Visit Laura and Rose’s homes in Mansfield
All About Kids! episode with Roger Lea MacBride, courtesy of Hennepin County Library
Roger Lea MacBride’s presidential campaign ad courtesy of Carl Albert Center Archives
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Last Week on Daughter Dearest Rosewelder.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Lane was the only living child of Laura Ingalls Wilder
and her husband Almonzo. She was born in South Dakota
in eighteen eighty six, when Laura was nineteen years old.
Much like Laura, Rose grew up in abject poverty. Unlike Laura,
Rose was able to get an education and in the
nineteen twenties went on to become one of the most
(00:26):
successful freelance writers in the country. In the early nineteen thirties,
Rose lost all her money in the stock market crash.
She then began to collaborate with her mother on what
would become the first book in the Little House series,
Little House in the Big Woods. At the same time
Rose was helping Laura, Rose was secretly writing her own
(00:47):
book based on Laura's life, called Let the Hurricane Roar.
Rose secretly sold this book to the Saturday Evening Post,
and when Laura realized her daughter's deception, this non surprise
caused a huge rift in their relationship, a rift that
was only overcome when Rose and Laura were forced to
(01:07):
revise Farmer Boy together, the second.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Book in the Little House series.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Laura was so disturbed by Rose using her story and
then weirdly combining it with the story of Laura's parents,
Charles and Caroline. That sometime in the early thirties, shortly
after Big Woods was published, Laura sat down and wrote
down her own account of what had happened. She wrote
it for herself and never meant it for publication. We
(01:34):
know this book today as the First four Years. This
is where our story picks up. It's an important moment
and one that would forever warp Laura and Rose's legacies,
but they'd never know it. The truth is, the First
four Years is arguably the reason we are still talking
(01:54):
about Rose today, and not just because she's in it.
It's publication after bo both Laura and Rose's death led
people to start asking the question still being asked by
some today, if this writing was so different from the
rest of the series? Did Laura actually write the Little
House Books?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
If you look at all the available information, and you
look at Laura's writing, and you look at Rose wilder
Lane's writing, Rose wilder Lane wrote the books.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
We know that Rose and Laura had a complicated, tumultuous, intense,
codependent relationship.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
I can only say that Rose wilder Lane and Lauren
Goes Wilder's relationship was complicated, and you know all mother
daughter relationships are complicated, but it was fraught with an
additional layer of professional rivalry.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
But how intertwined was their creative process.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I think she said, Mom, tell me the stories, and
then she wrote them down.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
She made up some stuff, she made it cozy.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
It's impossible to leave her out. She has just woven
into the whole story in ways that you cannot ignore.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
There are other people woven into this story who also
can't be ignored. A decade after her death, Laura Ingelswilder's
entire legacy landed in the hands of a man she'd
never met, a man who almost immediately sold it to
Hollywood and then turned around and used the proceeds to
(03:26):
make a run for president of the United States on
the Libertarian ticket, which brings us right back to the
first four years. It was this man, Rose's heir who
discovered the first four years in some of Rose's papers.
Speaker 6 (03:44):
After mis Laine's death in nineteen sixty eight came the
discovery of the manuscript that she never published the first
four years. So Roger, being the heir, took that manuscript
to Harper and Rowe and Ursula Nordstrom immediately wanted.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
To publish it, and thus was launched one of the
literary world's great conspiracies. Decades later, people are still asking
the question did Rose write the books herself or was
she just her mother's very heavy handed editor. How much
of Rose's political ideology ended up woven into Laura's story.
(04:27):
How is Little House connected to the libertarian movement? And
is Rose responsible for funding the education of two of
the most powerful right wing operatives in America. That's coming
up on part two of Daughter Dearest, Politics and Rose.
I'm Glennis McNicol and this is Rose Wilder Lame.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Let's begin in the early nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
As you will recall from our last episode, Laura has
just finished writing Little House in the Big Woods. Rose
has secretly written and sold Let the Hurricane Roar, using
facts from Laura's life and childhood, but changing them around
in confusing ways. Upon discovering this deception, Laura is understandably
(05:59):
upset with Rose, but she's also confused, and it's this
confusion that leads her to straighten out the facts of
the story for herself. Nancy tis dad Coople, editor in
chief of the Pioneer Girl Project, believes when Laura read
Hurricane and saw how her parents' story had been reworked
using details of her own life, she sat down and
(06:22):
wrote The First four Years.
Speaker 7 (06:24):
Her objection, I believe, was to the confusion that Lane
added to the story, and that's why I think she
wrote the First four Years because she wanted to get
her own story down the way it happened, at least
in her mind, and not the way Lane would fictionalize it.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Keep in mind the timing of that writing, because here's
where we're going to leap forward all the way to
nineteen seventy one, which is the year the First four
Years is published. Rose has been dead for three years.
As everyone who owns the Yellow Little House on the
Prairie box set knows, the First four Years is positioned
as the last book in the Little House series. The
(07:08):
issue is there was nothing in the First four Years
publication that alerted readers to the fact that it may
have been written before the other books in the series
and not as their conclusion. Nor was the reader made
to understand that neither Rose nor Laura had ever intended
the First Four Years to see the light of day.
Speaker 7 (07:30):
As Wayne told Harper's in the sixties, A books not
ready for publication. I thought my mother had destroyed it.
It was never intended to be published as the first
four years is jarring. The tone is completely different from
the rest of the books. As a child, I believed
all the books had emerged straight from Laura's head, and
(07:52):
this made the first four years especially shocking.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Where had my Laura gone? This new Laura was cynical
and angrier. Nothing in this world felt safe or appealing.
Here's Laura's biographer, Caroline Fraser.
Speaker 5 (08:09):
It's so different and kind of disappointing in some regards,
and to an adult who's studying Laura, it's an invaluable
document because it shows her struggling to incorporate the worst
moments of her life in a way that would fit
(08:31):
in with the uplifting narrative the arc of the series.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
It's definitely easier as a grown up to understand the
first four Years as a first draft, something that was
never intended for publication, written by Laura for herself as
a way to keep her own memory separate from Rose's
fictionalization of them. And it's also easier to understand why
Laura dropped it the subject matter was too unbearable. In
(08:58):
the first four years of their marriage, Laura and Almonzo
lost multiple crops, they went into enormous debt, they lost
an infant son, Almonza was handicapped by diphtheria, and their
home burned down, all before Laura turned twenty two. Can
you blame her for not wanting to revisit that She.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Just couldn't do it. I mean, there just was no
way that she could do it, And I think she
thought about it after she had finished the series in
nineteen forty three. She definitely thought about returning, probably to
that manuscript and trying to work it up into a
completed sequel to the series. But also I think there
(09:41):
just wasn't any way to write about her adult experiences
as an adult in a way that would have been
acceptable to a children's audience.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
But that's not how the publishers presented the.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
First four years, and the difference between this and the
previous books inevitably led to questions, how could the writing
be so different? Where was the Laura we knew and
loved from all the other books. Decades later, someone would
try to answer this question. It's at this point that
(10:16):
Rose's story starts to loop back and forth in time.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
A little bit.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Right now, we're going to jump forward all the way
to nineteen ninety three, when a man named William Holtz
published a biography of Rose called Ghost in the Little House. Holtz,
a University of Missouri professor, felt Rose had not received
her due for her impact on American culture and politics,
(10:43):
and when about rectifying that Ghost in the Little House
remains the only full biography of Rose, and Rose was
absolutely deserving of her own biography. But Holtz's description of
Laura and her and Rose's relationship left readers aghast. Holtz
referred to Laura throughout the book sarcastically and demeaningly as
(11:07):
Mama Bess, Rose's pet name for her mother, and seemed
to take on Rose's view that all the hurdles in
Rose's life were indeed Laura's fault. In Holtz's view, Laura
was an exacting and unloving mother and Rose was a
deeply sympathetic and beleaguered daughter. But the real shock was
(11:31):
the seven page appendix, which laid out Holtz's argument that
it was Rose who.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Had written the books at the time.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Ghost in the Little House was published, The public's understanding
of Laura was almost entirely the product of the books
and the hit television show to the world. At that point,
Rose was perennially a small child. Now Here was this
hearpy mother and her silently toling daughter. The book inevitably
(11:59):
land like a bomb in the little houseworld, and lo,
a full blown conspiracy was born. Part of the reason
the conspiracy was able to flourish so well was that
a sort of vacuum of information had always existed around
Laura's authorship of the books. During her lifetime, Rose had
(12:22):
relentlessly insisted that her mother had done all of this
work on her own. And it's hard to gauge how
involved Rose actually was because Laura didn't keep a journal,
and for a long time their collaboration happened in person.
All we really have to go by are some letters
of correspondence between the mother and daughter. So when Holtz
pressed on the unlikeliness of a sixty five year old
(12:44):
woman penning these masterpieces without help, and then used Rose's
letters and journal entries to back up the argument that
Rose had been a collaborator, the theory began to take
root that Rose was the true author because there was
very little to counter it.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
So who actually wrote the Little House Books? Laura or Rose?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
From an obsessively researched twenty twenty three viewpoint, it seems
clear that the answer probably lies somewhere between the two,
much closer to Laura than to Rose. Caroline Fraser believes
there are absolutely scenes written by Rose in some of
the books, including some of the scenes that stand out
to readers as especially political, like the Fourth of July
(13:28):
scene in Little Town on the Prairie, where Laura includes
a speech about the glorious fourth and how most of
the people there are trying to pull themselves up by
their bootstraps. She then reprints the entirety of the Declaration
of Independence, which I must tell you is deeply confusing
to me as a child in Canada, and follows this
(13:49):
with Laura's desire to say amen at the end of
the reading.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
I think that we can identify, you know, based on
manuscript evidence and and also style, we could certainly identify
certain scenes, you know, the famous Fourth of July scenes
in Farmer Boy and Little Town. I think it is
that she clearly wrote and kind of inserted herself her
(14:17):
own voice into writing.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Fraser also thinks that Rose and Laura may have brought
different strengths to the books, including the fact that Rose
may have been more talented at writing dialogue than her mother.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
You can see Rose, I think you can hear her
in some of the dialogue. You know, she was quite
gifted at doing that, compared to her mother, who I
think that was a really hard thing for Laura to
reconstruct natural dialogue, especially at the beginning. So you can
see their contrasting styles coming through, where Rose was bringing
(14:55):
this kind of sense of stability and safety and sort
of gentleness us to the stories, some of which is
quite necessary, I think. But in other moments you can
see Laura's vision, which was a much you know, more stark,
more plain, more confrontational, a little bit almost you know,
(15:17):
like this was the way it was. This, This is
how hard it was to live this life. That's Laura.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
There's also the fact we have Rose's own writing to
go by. We know what Rose's authorship looks like. Here's
Pamela smith Hill.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Rose weather Lane's writing is it's very distant, it's very
kind of turgid prose. She uses lots of abstract rather
than concrete vocabulary. When you read Freeland and Let the
Hurricane War, it's almost as if Rose weather Lane is
trying too hard. They don't have that sense of effortless
(16:00):
artistry that the Little House Books have. And then there
are passages in both of those books where she basically
plagiarizes her mother's Pioneer Girl text. So she'll take a
description from Pioneer Girl, an eloquent, beautiful description of a
pioneer sunset that is lyrical and poetic, and she will
(16:24):
PLoP it into the middle of Let the Hurricane War
and Freeland, But she uses abstract vocabulary, and it's kind
of clumsy and sophomoric. So I think there are things
we can never know about the chemistry between Lauren Goswilder
and Rose Wilder Lay. But the idea that Rose Wilder
(16:45):
Lane is singly responsible for the Little House Books doesn't
hold water when you look at her own writing.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Both Nancy Tysdad Coopele and Caroline Fraser agree it's almost
impossible to credit Rose with authorship.
Speaker 7 (17:00):
I believe Rolas was just really a brilliant editor.
Speaker 8 (17:03):
I think she was an editor and she was an agent,
and people don't really understand the extent to which editors
and ancients shape people's writing and how they tell their stories.
Their goal, for the most part is to help people
tell their story the best way possible, and that's what
(17:25):
Lane is doing.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
They both contributed a lot, but Laura was the person
who wrote the books. You know, Rose was an editor.
She was certainly a heavier editor than most people might conceive,
but that also is not unheard of.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Whatever her limitations as a writer were, there's no question
Rose was an exceptional editor. Even Laura's official editor, Ursula Nordstrom,
once remarked that the only manuscripts that ever came to
her perfectly formed were that of Laura's and shark Arlette's
web author E. B.
Speaker 9 (18:01):
White.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Laura herself always recognized this as one of Rose's strengths.
In a letter, she once told her daughter, I am
glad you like my use of words and my descriptions,
but without your fine touch, it would be a flop.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
I think to people who don't have that experience with publishing,
that may be a shock, but it's certainly a factor
in many works. But you know, I'm not one of
those people who thinks that the book should be by
Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. Now, I don't
think that's That's not how it works.
Speaker 8 (18:35):
In my opinion, the story is Wilder's voice, that child
like wonder that the world is Wilder's and it is
laying that is helping her shape this.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So, Joe, as a reasonably objective observer, knowing all this,
what are your thoughts now on who wrote the Little
House Books?
Speaker 10 (19:00):
It sounds to me like Rose is the editor that
all of us would love to have, That she is engaged,
that she is hands on, and not just hands on,
but that she's getting her hands dirty in a manuscript,
which I personally think is very important for an editor.
But I will lean towards given all of the information
(19:21):
that we have, and will lean towards Laura writing the
books and Rose editing.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
I agree, Rose just sounds like the editor you dream of,
you know, who really understands what you're after and helps
you get there. But we also know what Rose's books
look like, and there's no magic in them, like all
of this magic is clearly coming from Laura.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
And I also, just on a very basic level, I.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Find it really difficult to imagine that Laura at age
sixty five would be like, Okay, Rose, here are my stories.
That's one thing, but please feel free to sign my
name to this and then send me out in the
world as a liar.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Because that's like, that's a lot.
Speaker 10 (20:05):
That's a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Why would do either of them try to execute that
on a very very practical level, And why would Laura
be out there taking credit for something that wasn't her work.
But you know, there's also something about the first four
years that reminds me of the Harper Lee book Go
Set a Watchman.
Speaker 10 (20:23):
Yes, yes, that's exactly what I've been thinking this entire time.
This smells of ghosts at a Watchman. I think we
need to explain how this actually came about.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
So Ghost Set a Watchman was It turns out the
original draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that Harper Lee
turned into her editor, and her editor said, no, pull
out this part where you're a kid and turn that
into a book which came out as To Kill a Mockingbird.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Which is an American classic, which is an American classic.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Decades later, after harper Le's death, find ghost at a
Watchman and republish it as a new undiscovered book with
very little framing of how this book exists and why?
And everyone read it and was like, what is this?
Why is Atticus a racist? Where's this unwieldy, terrible book
(21:17):
coming from? And it launched a lot of questions over well,
did Harperley actually write to Colon Mockingberg? But I think
the same thing happened, which is they found an original,
unpublished draft, published it without context, and all it did
was lead to more questions.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 10 (21:36):
It goes at A Watchman, much like the first four
Years was never supposed to see the light of day.
And there's a reason that these books sat in the drawer,
and then there's a reason, of course that.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
They were later published.
Speaker 10 (21:49):
And I think that that reason is money, money, money.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Money, money, money, and also the deceptiveness of publishing it
is like a new book, Like if they'd been published
within the context they were written, that could be fascinating
from research purposes, but published.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
As like here's a new book, it's like, well what
is this?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 10 (22:13):
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Funnily enough, go said A Watchman has a ton of
politics in it too that were really questionable. And I
think what we're headed into after the break is like
how much of Rose's questionable politics are in Laura's books.
(22:38):
As a kid, the Little House Books felt like a
story of family, hard work, and adventure. As an adult,
it's easier to see there might be another message beneath
all the coziness.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
I loved that this was her story, and I loved
that it came from her memories.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
That's politics. Writer Rebecca Traster. She loved The Little House
Books growing.
Speaker 11 (23:01):
Up, and I think especially growing up with my own
mom and her sister, who had these memories of a
rural life that was so distant from anything that anyway
that I lived in the.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Suburbs, like, I really valued that kind of.
Speaker 7 (23:15):
Storytelling about you know, remember how we used to do things.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Coming back to them as a grown up, she was
less concerned about the authorship question of the books than
the politics she found there. Politics that sounded an awful lot.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Like Rose, she was just manipulating her mother's memories to
serve her own political purposes.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
There are many people who consider Little House to be
a libertarian fantasy, and one of the main reasons for
this is that Rose, in later life became a strident
voice in the libertarian movement. But how did she get
there and how much of the politics people claim to
see in Little House are actually hers, and how much
are actually Laura's.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
The fact that Rose's politics shapes these books is really
important to understanding American history.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
These days, we understand complicated to be a word we
attached to any woman who was living outside her culturally
prescribed role. But Rose really was very complicated. She was
incredibly smart and talented in a time and place that
did not reward or support women for being so. She
suffered debilitating bouts of depression before we understood it to
(24:30):
be a disease. She'd been divorced, She'd lost a child,
She'd traveled widely. She made a lot of money and
was very bad at managing it. For all the financial
support she gave her parents, they were often supporting her.
She had no living children but repeatedly adopted sons. And
she had increasingly extreme political views. These last two are
(24:54):
key and dominate the legacy of Little House in bizarre ways.
Let's start with the increasingly extreme political views. Rose had
always had strong beliefs largely rooted in the triumph of
the individual over the government. You can see this theme
reoccurring in her stories of Jack London and Herbert Hoover
(25:15):
and later in the novels about her parents, especially her father.
But during the depression, these beliefs hit a fever pitch.
Rose loathed FDR and Eleanor. In a number of letters
she wished them both dead and volunteered to do the killing,
which was not unusual for her time and place. As
(25:36):
Pamela smith Hill notes.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
We do know that the Wilders opposed the New Deal.
They were not great fans of FDR. But almost everybody
in Wright County, Missouri at that time, almost everybody in
southern Missouri at that time, was opposed to the New Deal,
So in that sense, it wasn't unusual.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
In nineteen thirty five, at the height of the depression,
Rose's rants, until now mostly contained to letters, moved onto
the pages of the Saturday Evening Post. Rose had left
Rocky Ridge at this point, though was still deep in
edits with Laura for on the Banks of Plumb Creek.
The essay she wrote for the Saturday Evening Post was
titled Credo. It argued for individual liberty, and to some
(26:20):
extent it argued in support.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Of fascist regimes.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Rose leaned on her travel experience in communist Russia to
make the argument that the new Deal was leading to
a terrible future for the country. Many of the personal
anecdotes she included to make this argument were not surprisingly total.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Fiction, but people loved it. The essay was a hit.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Herbert Hoover, now former President, who had long tried to
disassociate himself from Rose, called for a million copies to
be printed. Creto was reissued as a pamphlet and would
become a foundational document in the libertarian movement, which was
then still in its infancy. It also signaled a shift
for Rose into political commentary, which she would increasingly lean
(27:07):
into for the rest of her life. Readers of Rose's
novels Let the Hurricane, Roar, and Freeland will not have
to guess at her politics. She includes them with a
heavy hand. But the question that plagues Little House readers
is how much of Rose's politics are in the Little
House series, and perhaps more importantly, did Laura share these beliefs.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
The answer is yes to an extent.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
It's quite clear in letters that she wrote to Rose
that she just accepted kind of unquestioningly a lot of
Ros's crazier assertions and conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
That's Caroline Fraser again.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
They certainly shared at the beginning of FDR's push for
the New Deal. They share this dismay and ultimately contempt
for New Deal policies for FDR, especially for Eleanor Roosevelt.
I mean Eleanor Roosevelt somehow came in for the worst
of much of what they had to say.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Certain scenes in the books, like the Fourth of July
scene we mentioned earlier, have always stood out, and as
a kid with no knowledge of American history or politics,
it was jarring to go from the day to day
experience of the Ingles family to these broad ruminations on
the idea of America.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
When you look at a book like Little Town on
the Prairie with the big Fourth of July episode and
the speech that rosewelder Lane clearly inserted into that manuscript,
that seems to sound very libertarian in its focus. No
wonder people have assumed that Wilder may have shared her
(28:53):
daughter's politics. On the other hand, if you look at
children's books from this period, and you remember that that
Little Town on the Prairie was published as the world
was about to descend into war, you find the same
patriotic themes, the same patriotic ideas that come filtered through
books like Johnny Tremaine and caddy Woodlawn.
Speaker 12 (29:16):
So I think, in.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Part because the Little House Books have endured as some
of these other books haven't, we read into them perhaps
more of Rose's politics than we should have.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Perhaps the most useful evidence in this argument is Rose's
own writing. We talked about Freeland in the last episode,
Rose's second novel, based largely on the early years of
her parents' marriage and their life in Dkota Territory. This
was the novel Laura was okay with Rose writing, unlike
Let the Hurricane Roar, which Rose wrote in secret. Caroline
(29:57):
Fraser describes Freeland as straight prop ganda. It contains lines
like living is never easy, that all human history is
a record of achievement in disaster, and that our great
asset is the valor.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Of the American spirit.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Freeland is not a good book, and while it was
successful at the time of publication, the only reason we
still know about it is its association with Laura and
the Little House series. Had Laura wanted The Little House
Books to be overtly political, she certainly had that option. Instead,
she was always more focused on sticking to the daily
(30:37):
details of life and family.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
She didn't publicize it in no way that Rose did.
I mean Rose made at her life's work to publicize
these ideas in any way that she could. Laura didn't
seem to be interested in doing that.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
But Rose promoted the opposite.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
She wanted people to believe the libertary message was implicit
in the Little House Books. She wanted people to understand
them as a libertarian fantasy, which is part of the
reason why she insisted the books were true. The details
of the ingles survival on the prairie supported her ideology.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
Well, there's this whole period after her mother's death when
she becomes quite adamant about insisting that everything in the
books is true and that the books represent an argument
for her political stance. You know that they're an argument
for self reliance, that they're a monument to hard work
(31:37):
and you know, pulling yourself up by your bidstraps.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
The Little House Books are tied into libertarian politics for
more reasons than this. Let's go back to Rose's early
years as a journalist. For much of her life, starting
in the early nineteen twenties, Rose traveled widely.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
More than once.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Rose took it upon herself to financially support some of
the young people she met on her travels, often young men,
though not always.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Here's Reverend Nicholas Enman.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
He's the director of the Laura Ingleswilder Home and Museum
in Mansfield, Missouri.
Speaker 12 (32:13):
She was always finding people in different parts of the
world and embracing them and encouraging them something that she
paid for their educations. She just had that surrogate mother
grandmother role for so many people.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Later in life, Rose took on a young man named
Roger Lee McBride. In nineteen thirty eight, Rose relocated to Danbury, Connecticut,
where she would remain for the rest of her life.
A few years later, in the mid nineteen forties, Rose
met McBride.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
He was a teenager at the time.
Speaker 13 (32:45):
Rose was an extraordinary person. I met her when I
was seventeen and she was about sixty.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Here's McBride describing meeting Rose for the very first time
in an interview he gave in the early nineties for
a television show called All About Kids.
Speaker 13 (33:00):
My father was an editor of the Reader's Digest and
had condensed one of the books she wrote in later life.
He thought she was fascinating and could teach me a lot,
and I had the same kind of curious mind about
affairs and ideas that Rose in fact had, and she
recognized that.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Rose and McBride established an immediate connection, one that would
also remain for the rest of her life.
Speaker 13 (33:23):
I used to hitchhike from our home in New York
near the Digest to her then farm in Connecticut, small
farm on Saturdays, and oh weeder gardens and help clearer
sheds out and stuff like that in the afternoon. In
the evening, she'd cook her famous chicken pie for me,
and we would talk until one or two in the
morning about all the things that a seventeen year old
wanted to ask an older, wiser person, stories about everybody
(33:45):
she knew, from Jack London to Herbert Hoover, and her
opinions about events in the world and theories and so on,
And in the end she adopted me informally is her grandson.
I used to call her Grandma, and it's still a
little strange for me to call her Rose, because I am.
She was a riveting person in a greater influence on
me than everybody else in my life put together. During
(34:05):
the formative.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Stages, McBride also strongly shared Rose's libertarian views. He would
later say he was fascinated by her mind Here's Bill Anderson.
Speaker 6 (34:16):
Because Rose was such a proponent of conservative politics and
anti New Deal procedures, she looked upon any young person
that she met as someone that she could show the
other side of the coin to as far as governmental
(34:38):
doings such as the New Deal.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
During the time McBride knew Rose, she grew in prominence
in the libertarian movement.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
William F.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Buckley would later refer to Rose as one of the
three Furies of modern libertarianism, along with Einrand and Isabel Patterson.
In the mid nineteen fifties, Rose donated money little House
residual money to fund a free market academy in Colorado called.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
The Freedom School.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
The school had been started by a businessman inspired by
Rose's writing. The Freedom School was attended by Charles and
David Coke, the billionaire brothers who funded the Tea Party
movement and have been widely credited for pushing the Republican
Party towards its more extreme right wing. In nineteen eighty,
David ran for president on the libertarian ticket. Both Coke
(35:26):
brothers claim to have been heavily influenced by the teachings
of the Freedom School. So how does Roger Lee McBride
factor into all this? I think it's important to pause
at this point and remember Rose is not a young
woman anymore. She hasn't been for quite some time. When
Laura died in early nineteen fifty seven, Rose was already
(35:48):
seventy and she needed help managing. She needed help managing
her mother's estate, she needed help managing the Little House estate.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
She needed help.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Managing her own correspondences, and she increasingly leaned on McBride,
now out of law school, to fill this role for her,
and then envisioned that he would continue to do so
after her death.
Speaker 6 (36:11):
Because Missus Lane knew that with her death the family
line would be completed, she designated Roger Lee McBride to
handle all the business of the Little House books. And
after Missus Lane's death in nineteen sixty eight came the
(36:33):
discovery of the manuscript that she never published the first
four years.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
In the fall of nineteen sixty eight, the age of
eighty one, shortly before she was set to start out
on a three year world tour, Rosewelder Lane died in
her sleep.
Speaker 6 (36:58):
Since there were no descendants of Laura and l Manzil
Wilder other than Rose, it was a responsibility to have
some successor appointed to handle the big business of the
Little House books.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
So Rose dies, Laura is already dead. None of Laura's
sisters had any children. There are no direct family heirs
to the legacy of these now classic children's books, and
because of this, the rights to Little House in the
Prairie land squarely in the hands of Rose's sole appointed heir,
Roger Lee McBride.
Speaker 13 (37:36):
When she died, she left me her estate, which of
course included her mother's, with the expectation that carry out
a number of commitments she won and carried out after
her death.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
That's right, the rights to Little House on the Prairie,
Laura's entire now beloved life story and life's work, landed
in the hands of a man she'd never met, who
bore no real to her whatsoever. McBride took his responsibility seriously,
yet he's also the reason so much conspiracy exists around
(38:09):
Laura and Rose.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Remember the first four years.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
The ninth book in the series, the one that was
published after Laura's death and was so jarring to readers, Well,
this is how it gets published.
Speaker 13 (38:22):
I found the manuscript to the first four Years, the
last of Laura's books, amongst Rose's papers, and I edited.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
That one shortly after inheriting everything Little House. McBride discovers
the manuscript for the first four Years in Laura's papers
and sends it directly to her publishers.
Speaker 6 (38:40):
So Roger veloped a good rapport with the editor Ursula Nordstrom,
and after missus Lane's death in nineteen sixty eight came
the discovery of the manuscript that she never published the
first four years. So Roger, being the heir and the
person that tended to Little House business, took that manuscript
(39:03):
to Harper and Rowe by that time, and Ursula Nordstrom
immediately wanted to publish it. So that was the first
of the additional Wilder writings that Roger offered to Harper
and Rowe and to a very very interested reading audience
who cried more and more and more they wanted more
(39:26):
to read written by Laura Ingles Wilder.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
The legendary children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom, who had overseen
the publication of the Little House books since the late
nineteen thirties, is initially thrilled and then somewhat puzzled by
the book, still, despite some misgivings, she publishes it. This
is nineteen seventy one. Then in nineteen seventy three, McBride
(39:53):
takes Little House to Hollywood and sells the option to
a TV executive named Ed Friendly. We're going to talk
at lengths about how the television show came to be
in a future episode, but the short version is Little
House on the Prairie. The TV version was immediately a
huge hit and vastly increased the amount of money McBride
was now making from the Little House copyright. Money he
(40:16):
took and used to launch a run for president on
the Libertarian ticket in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 14 (40:23):
This year, perhaps as never before, millions of Americans are
looking for an alternative to the candidates of the two
traditional parties. Consider the ideas of Roger McBride. He may
be the alternative you're looking for. Roger L. McBride, Libertarian
Party candidate for President of the United States.
Speaker 6 (40:41):
He was very dedicated to a list of requests that
Rose made that he carry out after her death, and
carrying on her libertarian philosophy, which he holdheartedly adhered to,
led him to this bit for the presidency. He had
no ideas that he would ever win, but of course
(41:04):
he wanted to get libertarianism individualism before the American public.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
McBride is not surprisingly a divisive figure in the Little
House world. He was very involved in the establishment of
the Little House sites and generous with his time. When
we were on the road last summer going to all
the houses, this was apparent. The McBride name came up frequently,
like when we first encountered Rose's possessions in the Ingles
(41:31):
House in Desment.
Speaker 9 (41:33):
Since Rose was famous during her lifetime, we have many
more of her belongings. This marbletop dresser belonged to her,
as well as the chamber pot and the commode. Wow
the McBride's they did come to see us, Roger Lee McBride.
We have photos of him walking through the house, pointing
and stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
You know, very lucky.
Speaker 5 (41:50):
The things that were Roses in here, were they always
here or.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
Were they donated by the McBride.
Speaker 9 (41:55):
They were donated by the McBride's.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
So this would have been Rose's.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Many people involved with the houses are aware of the
fraught aspect of his politics. They're grateful for his support.
Here's Reverend Inman from the Wilder Home in Mansfield, Missouri.
Speaker 7 (42:09):
Again.
Speaker 12 (42:10):
I mean, he was such an interesting person himself, no
his political career, that he was involved here at the
Wilder Home, you know, in helping give so many items
to different historic sites, to spread Missus Wilder's legacy out
so much to the Hoover Library, you know, I think
he really did. He was a good custodian to make
sure those things were preserved.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
But in preserving Rose's memory and giving her her due
in Little House History, McBride also inadvertently led to the
real explosion of the authorship controversy. When William Holtz, the
author of Ghost and Little House, the nineteen ninety three
biography of Rose we talked about, started researching the book.
Holts went to McBride for his approval and support to
(42:54):
access Rose's records. McBride willingly gave it. He wanted Rose
to get her due. Holtz failed to mention, however, his
entire authorship argument, and when McBride read the published book,
he was shocked and dismayed and asked the Laura sites
to pull it from their shelves. He said the book
(43:14):
can only serve to disappoint children who read Little House.
Instead of fueling authorship debates, McBride gave Rose her own
chapter of the story.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Before his death.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
In nineteen ninety five, McBride took it upon himself to
launch an entire children's book series about Rose, into which
he strongly wove his and Lane's political philosophies of libertarian independence.
Speaker 13 (43:39):
I thought, gee, I know Rose well enough and have
all these stories she told me and verbally and in
writing that I can write about her as a seven
year old girl and growing up to seventeen and get
it pretty well right. So the Trouble publishers encouraged me
to do it, and took me three years to do.
But I've done it.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
The spinoffs, called The Rose Years are marketed as an
extension of Laura's original series, though to put it mildly,
they lack the cultural impact of Little House. But where
does that leave us with the original Little House series?
They've certainly been wielded on behalf of the libertarian idea,
(44:19):
but can they themselves be considered a libertarian fantasy?
Speaker 1 (44:23):
The answer itself changes with time.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
I mean, I guess I just get interested, like under
a microscope.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
How the different generations see it.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
That's Lizzie Skernick. She teaches the Little House Books and
a children's literature class at NYU.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
And of course you have the generations where they're like,
this is a libertarian fantasy. Then you have the generations
that are so interested in like how it depicts privation,
you know, so the books have so many aspects to them.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
The truth is the Little House Books may be less
a libertarian fantasy than Laura creating a fantasy version of
her childhood.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
But how much of a fantasy.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
The only way to answer that question is to take
a look at what was actually going on in Laura's
life versus what she decided to include in the books.
And that's where we're going next week. We're going to
fact check Little House and go to some of the
places Laura could not bear to revisit in her writing.
(45:30):
Wilder is written and hosted by me Glennis McNichol. Our
story editors are Joe Piazza and Emily Meroanoff. Our senior
producer is Emily Meroanoff. Our producers are Mary do, Sina Ozaki,
and Jessica Crinchich. Our associate producer is Lauren Phillip. Sound
design and mixing by Amanda ro Smith. Our scene in
additional music was composed by Elise McCoy. We are executive
(45:53):
produced by Joe Piazza, Niki tor, Ali Perry and Me.
If you're enjoying Wilder, please consider rating and reviewing us
on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
It actually helps us out quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Thank you to the Laura Ingles Wilder Memorial Society in Dismet,
South Dakota, and the Laura Ingles Wilder Historic Home and
Museum in Mansfield, Missouri. And a special shout out to
Caroline Fraser, whose book Prairie Fires is the mother load
on Rose and Laura's relationship. Special thanks to the Hennepin
County Library for the recording of Roger Lee McBride and
(46:28):
to the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center for
the recording of Roger Lee McBride's presidential campaign. Thank you
to CDM Studios. Thank you Kathleen for being my emotional
support system. Please see our show notes if you want
to know more about the people we interviewed, the places
we visited, the books we mentioned. You can also find
our contact info there If you want to write to
(46:48):
us with your own thoughts and questions. We're going to
be including listener responses in our final episode. If you
have thoughts on Wylder or the Little House series, please
send us a voice memo to wow podcast at gmail
dot com. Follow us on Instagram at Wilder Underscore podcast,
and on TikTok at Wilder Podcast, where you can see
(47:09):
behind the scenes footage from all our travels.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.
Last Week on Daughter Dearest Rosewelder.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Lane was the only living child of Laura Ingalls Wilder
and her husband Almonzo. She was born in South Dakota
in eighteen eighty six, when Laura was nineteen years old.
Much like Laura, Rose grew up in abject poverty. Unlike Laura,
Rose was able to get an education and in the
nineteen twenties went on to become one of the most
(00:26):
successful freelance writers in the country. In the early nineteen thirties,
Rose lost all her money in the stock market crash.
She then began to collaborate with her mother on what
would become the first book in the Little House series,
Little House in the Big Woods. At the same time
Rose was helping Laura, Rose was secretly writing her own
(00:47):
book based on Laura's life, called Let the Hurricane Roar.
Rose secretly sold this book to the Saturday Evening Post,
and when Laura realized her daughter's deception, this non surprise
caused a huge rift in their relationship, a rift that
was only overcome when Rose and Laura were forced to
(01:07):
revise Farmer Boy together, the second.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Book in the Little House series.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Laura was so disturbed by Rose using her story and
then weirdly combining it with the story of Laura's parents,
Charles and Caroline. That sometime in the early thirties, shortly
after Big Woods was published, Laura sat down and wrote
down her own account of what had happened. She wrote
it for herself and never meant it for publication. We
(01:34):
know this book today as the First four Years. This
is where our story picks up. It's an important moment
and one that would forever warp Laura and Rose's legacies,
but they'd never know it. The truth is, the First
four Years is arguably the reason we are still talking
(01:54):
about Rose today, and not just because she's in it.
It's publication after bo both Laura and Rose's death led
people to start asking the question still being asked by
some today, if this writing was so different from the
rest of the series? Did Laura actually write the Little
House Books?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
If you look at all the available information, and you
look at Laura's writing, and you look at Rose wilder
Lane's writing, Rose wilder Lane wrote the books.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
We know that Rose and Laura had a complicated, tumultuous, intense,
codependent relationship.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
I can only say that Rose wilder Lane and Lauren
Goes Wilder's relationship was complicated, and you know all mother
daughter relationships are complicated, but it was fraught with an
additional layer of professional rivalry.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
But how intertwined was their creative process.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I think she said, Mom, tell me the stories, and
then she wrote them down.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
She made up some stuff, she made it cozy.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
It's impossible to leave her out. She has just woven
into the whole story in ways that you cannot ignore.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
There are other people woven into this story who also
can't be ignored. A decade after her death, Laura Ingelswilder's
entire legacy landed in the hands of a man she'd
never met, a man who almost immediately sold it to
Hollywood and then turned around and used the proceeds to
(03:26):
make a run for president of the United States on
the Libertarian ticket, which brings us right back to the
first four years. It was this man, Rose's heir who
discovered the first four years in some of Rose's papers.
Speaker 6 (03:44):
After mis Laine's death in nineteen sixty eight came the
discovery of the manuscript that she never published the first
four years. So Roger, being the heir, took that manuscript
to Harper and Rowe and Ursula Nordstrom immediately wanted.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
To publish it, and thus was launched one of the
literary world's great conspiracies. Decades later, people are still asking
the question did Rose write the books herself or was
she just her mother's very heavy handed editor. How much
of Rose's political ideology ended up woven into Laura's story.
(04:27):
How is Little House connected to the libertarian movement? And
is Rose responsible for funding the education of two of
the most powerful right wing operatives in America. That's coming
up on part two of Daughter Dearest, Politics and Rose.
I'm Glennis McNicol and this is Rose Wilder Lame.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Let's begin in the early nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
As you will recall from our last episode, Laura has
just finished writing Little House in the Big Woods. Rose
has secretly written and sold Let the Hurricane Roar, using
facts from Laura's life and childhood, but changing them around
in confusing ways. Upon discovering this deception, Laura is understandably
(05:59):
upset with Rose, but she's also confused, and it's this
confusion that leads her to straighten out the facts of
the story for herself. Nancy tis dad Coople, editor in
chief of the Pioneer Girl Project, believes when Laura read
Hurricane and saw how her parents' story had been reworked
using details of her own life, she sat down and
(06:22):
wrote The First four Years.
Speaker 7 (06:24):
Her objection, I believe, was to the confusion that Lane
added to the story, and that's why I think she
wrote the First four Years because she wanted to get
her own story down the way it happened, at least
in her mind, and not the way Lane would fictionalize it.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Keep in mind the timing of that writing, because here's
where we're going to leap forward all the way to
nineteen seventy one, which is the year the First four
Years is published. Rose has been dead for three years.
As everyone who owns the Yellow Little House on the
Prairie box set knows, the First four Years is positioned
as the last book in the Little House series. The
(07:08):
issue is there was nothing in the First four Years
publication that alerted readers to the fact that it may
have been written before the other books in the series
and not as their conclusion. Nor was the reader made
to understand that neither Rose nor Laura had ever intended
the First Four Years to see the light of day.
Speaker 7 (07:30):
As Wayne told Harper's in the sixties, A books not
ready for publication. I thought my mother had destroyed it.
It was never intended to be published as the first
four years is jarring. The tone is completely different from
the rest of the books. As a child, I believed
all the books had emerged straight from Laura's head, and
(07:52):
this made the first four years especially shocking.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Where had my Laura gone? This new Laura was cynical
and angrier. Nothing in this world felt safe or appealing.
Here's Laura's biographer, Caroline Fraser.
Speaker 5 (08:09):
It's so different and kind of disappointing in some regards,
and to an adult who's studying Laura, it's an invaluable
document because it shows her struggling to incorporate the worst
moments of her life in a way that would fit
(08:31):
in with the uplifting narrative the arc of the series.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
It's definitely easier as a grown up to understand the
first four Years as a first draft, something that was
never intended for publication, written by Laura for herself as
a way to keep her own memory separate from Rose's
fictionalization of them. And it's also easier to understand why
Laura dropped it the subject matter was too unbearable. In
(08:58):
the first four years of their marriage, Laura and Almonzo
lost multiple crops, they went into enormous debt, they lost
an infant son, Almonza was handicapped by diphtheria, and their
home burned down, all before Laura turned twenty two. Can
you blame her for not wanting to revisit that She.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Just couldn't do it. I mean, there just was no
way that she could do it, And I think she
thought about it after she had finished the series in
nineteen forty three. She definitely thought about returning, probably to
that manuscript and trying to work it up into a
completed sequel to the series. But also I think there
(09:41):
just wasn't any way to write about her adult experiences
as an adult in a way that would have been
acceptable to a children's audience.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
But that's not how the publishers presented the.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
First four years, and the difference between this and the
previous books inevitably led to questions, how could the writing
be so different? Where was the Laura we knew and
loved from all the other books. Decades later, someone would
try to answer this question. It's at this point that
(10:16):
Rose's story starts to loop back and forth in time.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
A little bit.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Right now, we're going to jump forward all the way
to nineteen ninety three, when a man named William Holtz
published a biography of Rose called Ghost in the Little House. Holtz,
a University of Missouri professor, felt Rose had not received
her due for her impact on American culture and politics,
(10:43):
and when about rectifying that Ghost in the Little House
remains the only full biography of Rose, and Rose was
absolutely deserving of her own biography. But Holtz's description of
Laura and her and Rose's relationship left readers aghast. Holtz
referred to Laura throughout the book sarcastically and demeaningly as
(11:07):
Mama Bess, Rose's pet name for her mother, and seemed
to take on Rose's view that all the hurdles in
Rose's life were indeed Laura's fault. In Holtz's view, Laura
was an exacting and unloving mother and Rose was a
deeply sympathetic and beleaguered daughter. But the real shock was
(11:31):
the seven page appendix, which laid out Holtz's argument that
it was Rose who.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Had written the books at the time.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Ghost in the Little House was published, The public's understanding
of Laura was almost entirely the product of the books
and the hit television show to the world. At that point,
Rose was perennially a small child. Now Here was this
hearpy mother and her silently toling daughter. The book inevitably
(11:59):
land like a bomb in the little houseworld, and lo,
a full blown conspiracy was born. Part of the reason
the conspiracy was able to flourish so well was that
a sort of vacuum of information had always existed around
Laura's authorship of the books. During her lifetime, Rose had
(12:22):
relentlessly insisted that her mother had done all of this
work on her own. And it's hard to gauge how
involved Rose actually was because Laura didn't keep a journal,
and for a long time their collaboration happened in person.
All we really have to go by are some letters
of correspondence between the mother and daughter. So when Holtz
pressed on the unlikeliness of a sixty five year old
(12:44):
woman penning these masterpieces without help, and then used Rose's
letters and journal entries to back up the argument that
Rose had been a collaborator, the theory began to take
root that Rose was the true author because there was
very little to counter it.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
So who actually wrote the Little House Books? Laura or Rose?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
From an obsessively researched twenty twenty three viewpoint, it seems
clear that the answer probably lies somewhere between the two,
much closer to Laura than to Rose. Caroline Fraser believes
there are absolutely scenes written by Rose in some of
the books, including some of the scenes that stand out
to readers as especially political, like the Fourth of July
(13:28):
scene in Little Town on the Prairie, where Laura includes
a speech about the glorious fourth and how most of
the people there are trying to pull themselves up by
their bootstraps. She then reprints the entirety of the Declaration
of Independence, which I must tell you is deeply confusing
to me as a child in Canada, and follows this
(13:49):
with Laura's desire to say amen at the end of
the reading.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
I think that we can identify, you know, based on
manuscript evidence and and also style, we could certainly identify
certain scenes, you know, the famous Fourth of July scenes
in Farmer Boy and Little Town. I think it is
that she clearly wrote and kind of inserted herself her
(14:17):
own voice into writing.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Fraser also thinks that Rose and Laura may have brought
different strengths to the books, including the fact that Rose
may have been more talented at writing dialogue than her mother.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
You can see Rose, I think you can hear her
in some of the dialogue. You know, she was quite
gifted at doing that, compared to her mother, who I
think that was a really hard thing for Laura to
reconstruct natural dialogue, especially at the beginning. So you can
see their contrasting styles coming through, where Rose was bringing
(14:55):
this kind of sense of stability and safety and sort
of gentleness us to the stories, some of which is
quite necessary, I think. But in other moments you can
see Laura's vision, which was a much you know, more stark,
more plain, more confrontational, a little bit almost you know,
(15:17):
like this was the way it was. This, This is
how hard it was to live this life. That's Laura.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
There's also the fact we have Rose's own writing to
go by. We know what Rose's authorship looks like. Here's
Pamela smith Hill.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Rose weather Lane's writing is it's very distant, it's very
kind of turgid prose. She uses lots of abstract rather
than concrete vocabulary. When you read Freeland and Let the
Hurricane War, it's almost as if Rose weather Lane is
trying too hard. They don't have that sense of effortless
(16:00):
artistry that the Little House Books have. And then there
are passages in both of those books where she basically
plagiarizes her mother's Pioneer Girl text. So she'll take a
description from Pioneer Girl, an eloquent, beautiful description of a
pioneer sunset that is lyrical and poetic, and she will
(16:24):
PLoP it into the middle of Let the Hurricane War
and Freeland, But she uses abstract vocabulary, and it's kind
of clumsy and sophomoric. So I think there are things
we can never know about the chemistry between Lauren Goswilder
and Rose Wilder Lay. But the idea that Rose Wilder
(16:45):
Lane is singly responsible for the Little House Books doesn't
hold water when you look at her own writing.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Both Nancy Tysdad Coopele and Caroline Fraser agree it's almost
impossible to credit Rose with authorship.
Speaker 7 (17:00):
I believe Rolas was just really a brilliant editor.
Speaker 8 (17:03):
I think she was an editor and she was an agent,
and people don't really understand the extent to which editors
and ancients shape people's writing and how they tell their stories.
Their goal, for the most part is to help people
tell their story the best way possible, and that's what
(17:25):
Lane is doing.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
They both contributed a lot, but Laura was the person
who wrote the books. You know, Rose was an editor.
She was certainly a heavier editor than most people might conceive,
but that also is not unheard of.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Whatever her limitations as a writer were, there's no question
Rose was an exceptional editor. Even Laura's official editor, Ursula Nordstrom,
once remarked that the only manuscripts that ever came to
her perfectly formed were that of Laura's and shark Arlette's
web author E. B.
Speaker 9 (18:01):
White.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Laura herself always recognized this as one of Rose's strengths.
In a letter, she once told her daughter, I am
glad you like my use of words and my descriptions,
but without your fine touch, it would be a flop.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
I think to people who don't have that experience with publishing,
that may be a shock, but it's certainly a factor
in many works. But you know, I'm not one of
those people who thinks that the book should be by
Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. Now, I don't
think that's That's not how it works.
Speaker 8 (18:35):
In my opinion, the story is Wilder's voice, that child
like wonder that the world is Wilder's and it is
laying that is helping her shape this.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So, Joe, as a reasonably objective observer, knowing all this,
what are your thoughts now on who wrote the Little
House Books?
Speaker 10 (19:00):
It sounds to me like Rose is the editor that
all of us would love to have, That she is engaged,
that she is hands on, and not just hands on,
but that she's getting her hands dirty in a manuscript,
which I personally think is very important for an editor.
But I will lean towards given all of the information
(19:21):
that we have, and will lean towards Laura writing the
books and Rose editing.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
I agree, Rose just sounds like the editor you dream of,
you know, who really understands what you're after and helps
you get there. But we also know what Rose's books
look like, and there's no magic in them, like all
of this magic is clearly coming from Laura.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
And I also, just on a very basic level, I.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Find it really difficult to imagine that Laura at age
sixty five would be like, Okay, Rose, here are my stories.
That's one thing, but please feel free to sign my
name to this and then send me out in the
world as a liar.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Because that's like, that's a lot.
Speaker 10 (20:05):
That's a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Why would do either of them try to execute that
on a very very practical level, And why would Laura
be out there taking credit for something that wasn't her work.
But you know, there's also something about the first four
years that reminds me of the Harper Lee book Go
Set a Watchman.
Speaker 10 (20:23):
Yes, yes, that's exactly what I've been thinking this entire time.
This smells of ghosts at a Watchman. I think we
need to explain how this actually came about.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
So Ghost Set a Watchman was It turns out the
original draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that Harper Lee
turned into her editor, and her editor said, no, pull
out this part where you're a kid and turn that
into a book which came out as To Kill a Mockingbird.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Which is an American classic, which is an American classic.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Decades later, after harper Le's death, find ghost at a
Watchman and republish it as a new undiscovered book with
very little framing of how this book exists and why?
And everyone read it and was like, what is this?
Why is Atticus a racist? Where's this unwieldy, terrible book
(21:17):
coming from? And it launched a lot of questions over well,
did Harperley actually write to Colon Mockingberg? But I think
the same thing happened, which is they found an original,
unpublished draft, published it without context, and all it did
was lead to more questions.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 10 (21:36):
It goes at A Watchman, much like the first four
Years was never supposed to see the light of day.
And there's a reason that these books sat in the drawer,
and then there's a reason, of course that.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
They were later published.
Speaker 10 (21:49):
And I think that that reason is money, money, money.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Money, money, money, and also the deceptiveness of publishing it
is like a new book, Like if they'd been published
within the context they were written, that could be fascinating
from research purposes, but published.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
As like here's a new book, it's like, well what
is this?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 10 (22:13):
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Funnily enough, go said A Watchman has a ton of
politics in it too that were really questionable. And I
think what we're headed into after the break is like
how much of Rose's questionable politics are in Laura's books.
(22:38):
As a kid, the Little House Books felt like a
story of family, hard work, and adventure. As an adult,
it's easier to see there might be another message beneath
all the coziness.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
I loved that this was her story, and I loved
that it came from her memories.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
That's politics. Writer Rebecca Traster. She loved The Little House
Books growing.
Speaker 11 (23:01):
Up, and I think especially growing up with my own
mom and her sister, who had these memories of a
rural life that was so distant from anything that anyway
that I lived in the.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Suburbs, like, I really valued that kind of.
Speaker 7 (23:15):
Storytelling about you know, remember how we used to do things.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Coming back to them as a grown up, she was
less concerned about the authorship question of the books than
the politics she found there. Politics that sounded an awful lot.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Like Rose, she was just manipulating her mother's memories to
serve her own political purposes.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
There are many people who consider Little House to be
a libertarian fantasy, and one of the main reasons for
this is that Rose, in later life became a strident
voice in the libertarian movement. But how did she get
there and how much of the politics people claim to
see in Little House are actually hers, and how much
are actually Laura's.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
The fact that Rose's politics shapes these books is really
important to understanding American history.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
These days, we understand complicated to be a word we
attached to any woman who was living outside her culturally
prescribed role. But Rose really was very complicated. She was
incredibly smart and talented in a time and place that
did not reward or support women for being so. She
suffered debilitating bouts of depression before we understood it to
(24:30):
be a disease. She'd been divorced, She'd lost a child,
She'd traveled widely. She made a lot of money and
was very bad at managing it. For all the financial
support she gave her parents, they were often supporting her.
She had no living children but repeatedly adopted sons. And
she had increasingly extreme political views. These last two are
(24:54):
key and dominate the legacy of Little House in bizarre ways.
Let's start with the increasingly extreme political views. Rose had
always had strong beliefs largely rooted in the triumph of
the individual over the government. You can see this theme
reoccurring in her stories of Jack London and Herbert Hoover
(25:15):
and later in the novels about her parents, especially her father.
But during the depression, these beliefs hit a fever pitch.
Rose loathed FDR and Eleanor. In a number of letters
she wished them both dead and volunteered to do the killing,
which was not unusual for her time and place. As
(25:36):
Pamela smith Hill notes.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
We do know that the Wilders opposed the New Deal.
They were not great fans of FDR. But almost everybody
in Wright County, Missouri at that time, almost everybody in
southern Missouri at that time, was opposed to the New Deal,
So in that sense, it wasn't unusual.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
In nineteen thirty five, at the height of the depression,
Rose's rants, until now mostly contained to letters, moved onto
the pages of the Saturday Evening Post. Rose had left
Rocky Ridge at this point, though was still deep in
edits with Laura for on the Banks of Plumb Creek.
The essay she wrote for the Saturday Evening Post was
titled Credo. It argued for individual liberty, and to some
(26:20):
extent it argued in support.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Of fascist regimes.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Rose leaned on her travel experience in communist Russia to
make the argument that the new Deal was leading to
a terrible future for the country. Many of the personal
anecdotes she included to make this argument were not surprisingly total.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Fiction, but people loved it. The essay was a hit.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Herbert Hoover, now former President, who had long tried to
disassociate himself from Rose, called for a million copies to
be printed. Creto was reissued as a pamphlet and would
become a foundational document in the libertarian movement, which was
then still in its infancy. It also signaled a shift
for Rose into political commentary, which she would increasingly lean
(27:07):
into for the rest of her life. Readers of Rose's
novels Let the Hurricane, Roar, and Freeland will not have
to guess at her politics. She includes them with a
heavy hand. But the question that plagues Little House readers
is how much of Rose's politics are in the Little
House series, and perhaps more importantly, did Laura share these beliefs.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
The answer is yes to an extent.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
It's quite clear in letters that she wrote to Rose
that she just accepted kind of unquestioningly a lot of
Ros's crazier assertions and conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
That's Caroline Fraser again.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
They certainly shared at the beginning of FDR's push for
the New Deal. They share this dismay and ultimately contempt
for New Deal policies for FDR, especially for Eleanor Roosevelt.
I mean Eleanor Roosevelt somehow came in for the worst
of much of what they had to say.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Certain scenes in the books, like the Fourth of July
scene we mentioned earlier, have always stood out, and as
a kid with no knowledge of American history or politics,
it was jarring to go from the day to day
experience of the Ingles family to these broad ruminations on
the idea of America.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
When you look at a book like Little Town on
the Prairie with the big Fourth of July episode and
the speech that rosewelder Lane clearly inserted into that manuscript,
that seems to sound very libertarian in its focus. No
wonder people have assumed that Wilder may have shared her
(28:53):
daughter's politics. On the other hand, if you look at
children's books from this period, and you remember that that
Little Town on the Prairie was published as the world
was about to descend into war, you find the same
patriotic themes, the same patriotic ideas that come filtered through
books like Johnny Tremaine and caddy Woodlawn.
Speaker 12 (29:16):
So I think, in.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Part because the Little House Books have endured as some
of these other books haven't, we read into them perhaps
more of Rose's politics than we should have.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Perhaps the most useful evidence in this argument is Rose's
own writing. We talked about Freeland in the last episode,
Rose's second novel, based largely on the early years of
her parents' marriage and their life in Dkota Territory. This
was the novel Laura was okay with Rose writing, unlike
Let the Hurricane Roar, which Rose wrote in secret. Caroline
(29:57):
Fraser describes Freeland as straight prop ganda. It contains lines
like living is never easy, that all human history is
a record of achievement in disaster, and that our great
asset is the valor.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Of the American spirit.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Freeland is not a good book, and while it was
successful at the time of publication, the only reason we
still know about it is its association with Laura and
the Little House series. Had Laura wanted The Little House
Books to be overtly political, she certainly had that option. Instead,
she was always more focused on sticking to the daily
(30:37):
details of life and family.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
She didn't publicize it in no way that Rose did.
I mean Rose made at her life's work to publicize
these ideas in any way that she could. Laura didn't
seem to be interested in doing that.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
But Rose promoted the opposite.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
She wanted people to believe the libertary message was implicit
in the Little House Books. She wanted people to understand
them as a libertarian fantasy, which is part of the
reason why she insisted the books were true. The details
of the ingles survival on the prairie supported her ideology.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
Well, there's this whole period after her mother's death when
she becomes quite adamant about insisting that everything in the
books is true and that the books represent an argument
for her political stance. You know that they're an argument
for self reliance, that they're a monument to hard work
(31:37):
and you know, pulling yourself up by your bidstraps.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
The Little House Books are tied into libertarian politics for
more reasons than this. Let's go back to Rose's early
years as a journalist. For much of her life, starting
in the early nineteen twenties, Rose traveled widely.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
More than once.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Rose took it upon herself to financially support some of
the young people she met on her travels, often young men,
though not always.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Here's Reverend Nicholas Enman.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
He's the director of the Laura Ingleswilder Home and Museum
in Mansfield, Missouri.
Speaker 12 (32:13):
She was always finding people in different parts of the
world and embracing them and encouraging them something that she
paid for their educations. She just had that surrogate mother
grandmother role for so many people.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Later in life, Rose took on a young man named
Roger Lee McBride. In nineteen thirty eight, Rose relocated to Danbury, Connecticut,
where she would remain for the rest of her life.
A few years later, in the mid nineteen forties, Rose
met McBride.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
He was a teenager at the time.
Speaker 13 (32:45):
Rose was an extraordinary person. I met her when I
was seventeen and she was about sixty.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Here's McBride describing meeting Rose for the very first time
in an interview he gave in the early nineties for
a television show called All About Kids.
Speaker 13 (33:00):
My father was an editor of the Reader's Digest and
had condensed one of the books she wrote in later life.
He thought she was fascinating and could teach me a lot,
and I had the same kind of curious mind about
affairs and ideas that Rose in fact had, and she
recognized that.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Rose and McBride established an immediate connection, one that would
also remain for the rest of her life.
Speaker 13 (33:23):
I used to hitchhike from our home in New York
near the Digest to her then farm in Connecticut, small
farm on Saturdays, and oh weeder gardens and help clearer
sheds out and stuff like that in the afternoon. In
the evening, she'd cook her famous chicken pie for me,
and we would talk until one or two in the
morning about all the things that a seventeen year old
wanted to ask an older, wiser person, stories about everybody
(33:45):
she knew, from Jack London to Herbert Hoover, and her
opinions about events in the world and theories and so on,
And in the end she adopted me informally is her grandson.
I used to call her Grandma, and it's still a
little strange for me to call her Rose, because I am.
She was a riveting person in a greater influence on
me than everybody else in my life put together. During
(34:05):
the formative.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Stages, McBride also strongly shared Rose's libertarian views. He would
later say he was fascinated by her mind Here's Bill Anderson.
Speaker 6 (34:16):
Because Rose was such a proponent of conservative politics and
anti New Deal procedures, she looked upon any young person
that she met as someone that she could show the
other side of the coin to as far as governmental
(34:38):
doings such as the New Deal.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
During the time McBride knew Rose, she grew in prominence
in the libertarian movement.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
William F.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Buckley would later refer to Rose as one of the
three Furies of modern libertarianism, along with Einrand and Isabel Patterson.
In the mid nineteen fifties, Rose donated money little House
residual money to fund a free market academy in Colorado called.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
The Freedom School.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
The school had been started by a businessman inspired by
Rose's writing. The Freedom School was attended by Charles and
David Coke, the billionaire brothers who funded the Tea Party
movement and have been widely credited for pushing the Republican
Party towards its more extreme right wing. In nineteen eighty,
David ran for president on the libertarian ticket. Both Coke
(35:26):
brothers claim to have been heavily influenced by the teachings
of the Freedom School. So how does Roger Lee McBride
factor into all this? I think it's important to pause
at this point and remember Rose is not a young
woman anymore. She hasn't been for quite some time. When
Laura died in early nineteen fifty seven, Rose was already
(35:48):
seventy and she needed help managing. She needed help managing
her mother's estate, she needed help managing the Little House estate.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
She needed help.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Managing her own correspondences, and she increasingly leaned on McBride,
now out of law school, to fill this role for her,
and then envisioned that he would continue to do so
after her death.
Speaker 6 (36:11):
Because Missus Lane knew that with her death the family
line would be completed, she designated Roger Lee McBride to
handle all the business of the Little House books. And
after Missus Lane's death in nineteen sixty eight came the
(36:33):
discovery of the manuscript that she never published the first
four years.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
In the fall of nineteen sixty eight, the age of
eighty one, shortly before she was set to start out
on a three year world tour, Rosewelder Lane died in
her sleep.
Speaker 6 (36:58):
Since there were no descendants of Laura and l Manzil
Wilder other than Rose, it was a responsibility to have
some successor appointed to handle the big business of the
Little House books.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
So Rose dies, Laura is already dead. None of Laura's
sisters had any children. There are no direct family heirs
to the legacy of these now classic children's books, and
because of this, the rights to Little House in the
Prairie land squarely in the hands of Rose's sole appointed heir,
Roger Lee McBride.
Speaker 13 (37:36):
When she died, she left me her estate, which of
course included her mother's, with the expectation that carry out
a number of commitments she won and carried out after
her death.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
That's right, the rights to Little House on the Prairie,
Laura's entire now beloved life story and life's work, landed
in the hands of a man she'd never met, who
bore no real to her whatsoever. McBride took his responsibility seriously,
yet he's also the reason so much conspiracy exists around
(38:09):
Laura and Rose.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Remember the first four years.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
The ninth book in the series, the one that was
published after Laura's death and was so jarring to readers, Well,
this is how it gets published.
Speaker 13 (38:22):
I found the manuscript to the first four Years, the
last of Laura's books, amongst Rose's papers, and I edited.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
That one shortly after inheriting everything Little House. McBride discovers
the manuscript for the first four Years in Laura's papers
and sends it directly to her publishers.
Speaker 6 (38:40):
So Roger veloped a good rapport with the editor Ursula Nordstrom,
and after missus Lane's death in nineteen sixty eight came
the discovery of the manuscript that she never published the
first four years. So Roger, being the heir and the
person that tended to Little House business, took that manuscript
(39:03):
to Harper and Rowe by that time, and Ursula Nordstrom
immediately wanted to publish it. So that was the first
of the additional Wilder writings that Roger offered to Harper
and Rowe and to a very very interested reading audience
who cried more and more and more they wanted more
(39:26):
to read written by Laura Ingles Wilder.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
The legendary children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom, who had overseen
the publication of the Little House books since the late
nineteen thirties, is initially thrilled and then somewhat puzzled by
the book, still, despite some misgivings, she publishes it. This
is nineteen seventy one. Then in nineteen seventy three, McBride
(39:53):
takes Little House to Hollywood and sells the option to
a TV executive named Ed Friendly. We're going to talk
at lengths about how the television show came to be
in a future episode, but the short version is Little
House on the Prairie. The TV version was immediately a
huge hit and vastly increased the amount of money McBride
was now making from the Little House copyright. Money he
(40:16):
took and used to launch a run for president on
the Libertarian ticket in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 14 (40:23):
This year, perhaps as never before, millions of Americans are
looking for an alternative to the candidates of the two
traditional parties. Consider the ideas of Roger McBride. He may
be the alternative you're looking for. Roger L. McBride, Libertarian
Party candidate for President of the United States.
Speaker 6 (40:41):
He was very dedicated to a list of requests that
Rose made that he carry out after her death, and
carrying on her libertarian philosophy, which he holdheartedly adhered to,
led him to this bit for the presidency. He had
no ideas that he would ever win, but of course
(41:04):
he wanted to get libertarianism individualism before the American public.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
McBride is not surprisingly a divisive figure in the Little
House world. He was very involved in the establishment of
the Little House sites and generous with his time. When
we were on the road last summer going to all
the houses, this was apparent. The McBride name came up frequently,
like when we first encountered Rose's possessions in the Ingles
(41:31):
House in Desment.
Speaker 9 (41:33):
Since Rose was famous during her lifetime, we have many
more of her belongings. This marbletop dresser belonged to her,
as well as the chamber pot and the commode. Wow
the McBride's they did come to see us, Roger Lee McBride.
We have photos of him walking through the house, pointing
and stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
You know, very lucky.
Speaker 5 (41:50):
The things that were Roses in here, were they always
here or.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
Were they donated by the McBride.
Speaker 9 (41:55):
They were donated by the McBride's.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
So this would have been Rose's.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Many people involved with the houses are aware of the
fraught aspect of his politics. They're grateful for his support.
Here's Reverend Inman from the Wilder Home in Mansfield, Missouri.
Speaker 7 (42:09):
Again.
Speaker 12 (42:10):
I mean, he was such an interesting person himself, no
his political career, that he was involved here at the
Wilder Home, you know, in helping give so many items
to different historic sites, to spread Missus Wilder's legacy out
so much to the Hoover Library, you know, I think
he really did. He was a good custodian to make
sure those things were preserved.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
But in preserving Rose's memory and giving her her due
in Little House History, McBride also inadvertently led to the
real explosion of the authorship controversy. When William Holtz, the
author of Ghost and Little House, the nineteen ninety three
biography of Rose we talked about, started researching the book.
Holts went to McBride for his approval and support to
(42:54):
access Rose's records. McBride willingly gave it. He wanted Rose
to get her due. Holtz failed to mention, however, his
entire authorship argument, and when McBride read the published book,
he was shocked and dismayed and asked the Laura sites
to pull it from their shelves. He said the book
(43:14):
can only serve to disappoint children who read Little House.
Instead of fueling authorship debates, McBride gave Rose her own
chapter of the story.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Before his death.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
In nineteen ninety five, McBride took it upon himself to
launch an entire children's book series about Rose, into which
he strongly wove his and Lane's political philosophies of libertarian independence.
Speaker 13 (43:39):
I thought, gee, I know Rose well enough and have
all these stories she told me and verbally and in
writing that I can write about her as a seven
year old girl and growing up to seventeen and get
it pretty well right. So the Trouble publishers encouraged me
to do it, and took me three years to do.
But I've done it.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
The spinoffs, called The Rose Years are marketed as an
extension of Laura's original series, though to put it mildly,
they lack the cultural impact of Little House. But where
does that leave us with the original Little House series?
They've certainly been wielded on behalf of the libertarian idea,
(44:19):
but can they themselves be considered a libertarian fantasy?
Speaker 1 (44:23):
The answer itself changes with time.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
I mean, I guess I just get interested, like under
a microscope.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
How the different generations see it.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
That's Lizzie Skernick. She teaches the Little House Books and
a children's literature class at NYU.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
And of course you have the generations where they're like,
this is a libertarian fantasy. Then you have the generations
that are so interested in like how it depicts privation,
you know, so the books have so many aspects to them.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
The truth is the Little House Books may be less
a libertarian fantasy than Laura creating a fantasy version of
her childhood.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
But how much of a fantasy.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
The only way to answer that question is to take
a look at what was actually going on in Laura's
life versus what she decided to include in the books.
And that's where we're going next week. We're going to
fact check Little House and go to some of the
places Laura could not bear to revisit in her writing.
(45:30):
Wilder is written and hosted by me Glennis McNichol. Our
story editors are Joe Piazza and Emily Meroanoff. Our senior
producer is Emily Meroanoff. Our producers are Mary do, Sina Ozaki,
and Jessica Crinchich. Our associate producer is Lauren Phillip. Sound
design and mixing by Amanda ro Smith. Our scene in
additional music was composed by Elise McCoy. We are executive
(45:53):
produced by Joe Piazza, Niki tor, Ali Perry and Me.
If you're enjoying Wilder, please consider rating and reviewing us
on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
It actually helps us out quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Thank you to the Laura Ingles Wilder Memorial Society in Dismet,
South Dakota, and the Laura Ingles Wilder Historic Home and
Museum in Mansfield, Missouri. And a special shout out to
Caroline Fraser, whose book Prairie Fires is the mother load
on Rose and Laura's relationship. Special thanks to the Hennepin
County Library for the recording of Roger Lee McBride and
(46:28):
to the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center for
the recording of Roger Lee McBride's presidential campaign. Thank you
to CDM Studios. Thank you Kathleen for being my emotional
support system. Please see our show notes if you want
to know more about the people we interviewed, the places
we visited, the books we mentioned. You can also find
our contact info there If you want to write to
(46:48):
us with your own thoughts and questions. We're going to
be including listener responses in our final episode. If you
have thoughts on Wylder or the Little House series, please
send us a voice memo to wow podcast at gmail
dot com. Follow us on Instagram at Wilder Underscore podcast,
and on TikTok at Wilder Podcast, where you can see
(47:09):
behind the scenes footage from all our travels.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.
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