Laura Ingalls Wilder
An item at American Writers Museum
Laura Ingalls Wilder's nine autobiographical novels for children, which include Little House on the Prairie (1935), offer a gripping, vivid, and personal account of settling the American frontier. As Wilder said, "I had seen and lived it all—all the successive phases of the frontier: first the frontiersman, then the pioneer, then the farmers and the towns."
Wilder originally wrote a memoir targeted to adults called Pioneer Girl. However, her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, thought that children made a better audience and helped her mother edit the manuscript and expand it into a series. Lane was right. Over 60 million copies of the Little House books were sold between 1932 and 2010, captivating readers with spare yet lyrical descriptions of life on the American frontier.
AMERICAN VOICES
An exhibit at American Writers Museum
American writing is distinctive, diverse, and comes in many forms from across the nation. The 100 authors featured here represent the evolution of American writing. Learn more about each writer on the timeline by turning the panels below their portraits. Explore centuries of writing by pulling, turning, and touching the interactive elements on the counter.
This is not meant to be a list of the greatest or most influential writers. Instead, we present authors and works as part of the American story as it grows and changes. Taken together, this rich literary heritage reflects America in all of its complexity: its energy, hope, conflict, disillusionment, and creativity.