I was introduced to the writing of Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, last year by my dear friend Dorothy, who having collected over the years many of Rose’s First Edition works, and was at that point late in her life where she was ready for them to be sold. Rose was born December 5, 1886, as she herself puts it in an autobiographical sketch “in Dakota Territory, in a claim shanty, 49 years ago come Next December.” She was born of Scotch/French/English ancestry. Her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder was the purported writer of the Little House on the Prairie series of books, but as most of us who have delved into the life of Rose Wilder Lane know, they were taken from diaries written by her mother, written up by Laura, and edited and retyped by Rose.

Laura’s first attempt was called “When Grandma was a Little Girl” but the publisher suggested she write a series of books, from which came The Little House Books, once again, edited by Rose. The “First Four Years” by Laura Ingalls Wilder tells the story of Rose’s birth and early childhood. “Her Story” a purported autobiography by Rose Wilder Lane in collaboration with Roger Lea MacBride is actually a rewrite of Rose’s “Diverging Roads” which although a work of fiction was based on Rose’s own marriage to Gillette Lane, and may have contained some autobiographical facts. Rose and her family actually spent a year in Westville, Florida, about a mile down the road from where we lived in Florida in the 1980s, some one hundred years later. The Book “On the Way Home” was actually taken from a diary of a trip the Wilder’s made in 1894 to the Ozarks in Missouri.

Rose was extremely intelligent, found school mostly boring; was allowed to study on her own and completed her schooling in Crowley, Louisiana at the home of an aunt. She went to telegraphy school, worked for Western Union in Kansas City, before moving to San Francisco in 1908. Living at the home of Bessie Beatty in San Francisco, Gillette Lane and Rose met, as he lived in the same apartment building. They were married in 1909. Rose had a miscarriage and they never had any children.

Rose’s first published book was Henry Ford’s Own Story. After her divorce from Gillette, she wrote Diverging Roads. Whilst living in New York she was not very happily employed as a ghost writer for Frederick O’Brien, writing White Shadows on the South Seas. Rose had a strong sense of duty to her family, and was driven to earn enough money to help support her parents at the Rocky Ridge Farm. “The Making of Herbert Hoover” was her next book.

While working for the American Red Cross as a reporter, Rose met “Troub” Helen Boylston, writer of the “Sue Barton” nurse books for girls. They became lifelong friends. Whilst traveling for her job, Rose fell in love with Albania, made a home there, and after he had saved her life, took under her wing, the Albanian boy by the name of Rex Meta. She even helped pay for his college education in later years.

After her return from overseas, Rose returned to the farm with Troub, where she wrote her most popular novels, Cindy, and Hill Billy. Once again returning to Albania with Troub, Rose wrote Travels with Zenobia, which was a journal of their trip. On their return they moved into the farm house at Rocky Ridge Farm, and had a modern rock house built there for her parents. It was during this time that Rose encouraged Laura to write down the many stories she had told to Rose as a child. A manuscript entitled “Pioneer Girl” was turned down by the publishers. Rose revamped the book as a children’s book and sold it to a publisher as “Little House in the Big Woods.”

One of Rose’s most famous books was “Let the Hurricane Roar” which was also based on her mother’s childhood stories. This book was later was republished as “The Young Pioneers” with the main characters, her grandma and grandpa Ingalls, Charles and Caroline, being renamed. “Free Land” and “Old Home Town” were also based on the lives of her own family, and her childhood years in Mansfield. After her mother’s death in 1957, Rose transformed her mother’s diaries into “On the Way Home.”

Rose had also become heavily involved in politics, going through many phases, first a populist, a Christian Socialist, then became a Pacifist during WWI, dabbled with communism and finally a fundamentalist American. She was a lecturer at Bob LeFevre’s Freedom School (This is where my friend first met Rose). She struggled mightily with one of her most serious book “The Discovery of Freedom.” In her later years she fought to get permission to go to Viet Nam as a war correspondent, and had an article published in Woman’s Day in 1961.

Rose loved the mountains, and the sea, Arabic architecture and the Moslem way of life. She loved to cook, especially for company. Rose died in October of 1968, and is buried in Mansfield, Missouri. There is now a series of books out that have been written about Rose’s own childhood in Missouri. They are “Little House on Rocky Ridge,” “Little Farm in the Ozarks,” “In the Land of the Big Red Apple,” “On the Other Side of the Hill.” Also “Little Town in the Ozarks,” “New Dawn on Rocky Ridge,” and finally, “On the Banks of the Bayou.”