THE SELECTED LETTERS OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER

Nonfiction

Glad to get back home again

THE SELECTED LETTERS OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER

Edited by William Anderson

379 pp. HarperCollins

Reviewed by Diane Diekman

“The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder is the final collection of unpublished writing from the author of the Little House books,” writes editor William Anderson in the introduction. “There no longer remains a well of her words left to print.” This book consists of excerpts of more than 400 letters written by Laura Ingalls Wilder over six decades. Anderson, author of Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography (1992), collected and edited them.

The letters are grouped into six chapters, with titles such as “The Farmer’s Wife (1894-1920)” and “Star of the Children’s Department (1937-1943).” Chronologically presented, they sometimes are preceded by explanatory notes from the editor. Other than correcting spelling and erroneous dates, Anderson says the letters “appear in this book essentially as she wrote them, leaving intact occasional antiquated language, usage of the era, and style.”

The earliest known example of Laura’s letter writing is an 1894 farewell note when she and husband Almanzo were moving from De Smet, South Dakota, to Missouri. Many of the earlier letters were to Almanzo, whom she called Manly. When Laura visited daughter Rose Wilder Lane in San Francisco in 1915, she wrote, “Manly Dear, I wish you were here. Half the fun I lose because all the time I am wishing for you. . . . Honest fact, I’m homesick, but there are so many interesting things still to be seen . . . that I must see some more of them before I leave.” She was 48 and he was 58. On another visit, ten years later, she wrote, “Manly I have thought how long you have been tied to the farm and when I get home you are going somewhere for a trip if for no other reason than to make you glad to get back home again.”

As the Little House books gained in popularity, letters from school children started flooding in. Laura made a point of answering them until in her eighties. In 1935, she wrote to a sixth-grade class, “It was a pleasure to have all your letters and to know that you liked Farmer Boy. Yes, Almanzo grew to be a very good farmer. Has been a farmer all the years since his father gave him Starlight and he has always loved horses.”

Laura and Rose exchanged correspondence as they worked on the Little House books. Selected Letters contains numerous excerpts of mother explaining to daughter how the manuscripts needed to be corrected: “We can’t have the blizzard the year of the Christmas tree, for that awful winter was the beginning of the wet seasons that kept the grasshoppers down and put them out.”

There are no direct descendants of the Ingalls family. Laura’s three sisters died childless, as did daughter Rose. Anderson bemoans the loss of historical items, especially Laura’s correspondence. “Laura’s parents and sisters were savers; such letters were tucked away in their house on Third Street in De Smet,” he writes in the introduction. After Carrie died in 1946, following the deaths of Mary and Grace, neighbors cleaned out the Ingalls home and disposed of its contents. Laura wrote to a distant relative, “We did not know Carrie was ill until we got a message that she was dead. After that we received delayed telegrams and miss-sent letters.” She didn’t seem to have been consulted about the house.

In that same 1946 letter, she wrote, “We are in very good health considering our age. Almanzo will be ninety in February, though I think I wrote you that before. I have so many letters to write that I am apt to repeat myself.” Laura would be 80 in February. Almanzo died in 1949.

In 1951, Laura explained to a librarian, “I thank you for the lovely birthday card. You will do me a great favor if you will explain to library patrons that I cannot answer all cards and letters received. There are between 800 and 900 of them. Tell them, please, that I thank them all and send them my love.” Several months later, she wrote to her publisher, “My eyes are troubling me lately and I cannot answer letters as I have been doing so they go unanswered as there is no one here to write but me. . .. Except for my eyes I am very well and getting along fine.”

In 1955 she wrote, “I appreciate the interest people take in me and thank them for the friendship they express. But I can no longer receive strangers nor answer their letters. I have done this as long as I can. My 88 years have caught up with me.”

Wilder’s fans will enjoy glimpsing the real person in The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I learned so much about her later years through what has been saved of her correspondence. The final letter was written in 1956, on her 89^th birthday and one year before her death: “My fan mail is very heavy and I am not answering it, but thought these few should receive a reply. . . Among the hundreds of birthday cards came two beautiful, large birthday cakes.”

--Diane Diekman is a retired U.S. Navy captain who grew up in South Dakota and currently lives in Sioux Falls. Her biographies are Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story and Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins.