Dive into Laura Ingalls Wilder's life through her letters

Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood is an open book. Eight books, to be precise.

The "Little House on the Prairie" series provides a mostly true glimpse into Wilder's Midwest frontier upbringing — but her adult life is not nearly as well-documented.

Wilder fans got a glimpse into that life with last year's publication of "Pioneer Girl," Wilder's annotated autobiography. Now, Wilder scholar William Anderson has compiled more than 400 of Wilder's letters for an unprecedented view of the writer's life.

"The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder" includes letters to family members, friends and fans. Anderson scoured museums, archives and private collections for find them. The letters date from 1894, when Wilder was 27, until 1956, when she was 89.

Here are two excerpts from the collection.

Life on "Plum Creek"

In this first excerpted letter from 1936, Wilder writes to her daughter Rose, who played an integral role in shaping the books, about life in Minnesota and their home on Plum Creek. ("Manly" is short for Almanzo, Wilder's husband.)

July 3rd

Rose Dearest,

I hope the map will help you understand Plum Creek better. The swimming hole was actually . . . a deep hole with the creek coming in and going out. I suppose it was gouged out by high water at some time, really a pond in the creek.

The creek was a prairie creek, running between grass grown banks, deeper where the banks narrowed and spreading out shallower where the banks set back. The creek water was low in the hot weather.

Because of the bend in the creek, the water was thrown against the bank under the dugout door and foamed and roared as it went around. The plank was across the creek when we came. I suppose it was there so the man before us could go quickly to the other part of the farm.

Pa always took the oxen and then the horses to water, down the slope of the high bank to where we played in the creek, never down by the plank across it.

I have an awful suspicion that we drank plain creek water, in the raw, without boiling or whatever. But that would make the reader think we were dirty, which we were not. So I said there was a spring . . . as it is located in my imagination, you may put it where it is most convenient.

The west bank might be higher, but we must be above it as we sat at the dugout door. The steep steps did go down from the earthen shelf in front of the dugout door, but Laura did go back up the steps, up the path past the dugout and along the top of the bank, just back of the dugout roof, then down the slope to the tableland until she came to the creek where Pa watered the oxen.

We never went just along the water's edge from the plank to the place where the oxen were watered. I think it was a muddy, slippery bank at the very edge of the water. Anyway, it was only by the path from the stable along the grassy slope to the lower bank and the creek.

The creek was rather shallow where it came into the swimming hole. There it widened and deepened. Willows and plum trees grew thick on the western side, making a little grove. hole the creek narrowed again and became shallow, making a place to wade and play on the edge of the little round meadow.

It ran narrower still, and deeper around the dugout and then away among plum trees and willows where I never followed it. I saw it at the other end of the plum thicket where I waded in the mud and got the bloodsuckers. When I waded into the dimness of that plum thicket I was going up creek toward the dugout. The banks were mud.

When the creek came from there out into the sunshine it ran over the sandy pebbly bottom where we waded and played so much after we lived in the new house. There was a little patch of sandy, gravelly beach right there. Just below the banks were muddy again and willows and plum trees grew again.

The first tree was a big willow. One end of the footbridge was fastened to it. The other end was fastened in the mud bank and from there the path went to Nelson's. Below the footbridge was another pond-like place in the creek where big fish lived. The creek ran away among the plums and willows and I never followed it. Never saw it any farther along except where we crossed it to go to town.

There it was out in the sunny prairie, shallow and rather wide, with a gravelly bottom. The water sparkled and rippled and looked altogether different than the dark water in the shadow of the willows and plum trees between the muddy banks.

After all I was only six and very busy about my affairs. What I remember is of course only a series of pictures.

Manly is waiting for this to go to town. When he is gone I will write you another letter.

Hurrah for the Glorious Fourth of July!

Much love,

Mama Bess

On the importance of libraries

In 1949, the city of Detroit named a library after Wilder. According to Anderson, it was the first time the city had named a public building after a living person or a woman.

Wilder was unable to travel to the opening ceremony of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Branch Library, as, she wrote, "Mr. Wilder's general health is better but he is ninety-two years old and not strong."

She sent the following letter to be read in her absence.

Dear Friends,

Although I am not present, I join with you in being glad that you now have a Branch Library in your community.

I am proud and grateful that it has been named for me and that my "Little House Books" will be among those you may read.

Unless you had lived as I did, where books were scarce and so prized greatly, you cannot realize how wonderful it really is to have a whole library so convenient for your use.

With congratulations and all good wishes, I am

Yours sincerely,

Laura Ingalls Wilder

From "The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder" by William Anderson Copyright © 2016 by William Anderson. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder