Showing posts with label Favourite Children's Authors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Favourite Children's Authors. Show all posts

Thursday, July 03, 2025

Favourite Children's Authors: Joan Aiken


Joan Aiken: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1963)


Edward Gorey's hand is unmistakable in the cover above. The first, British edition was illustrated throughout by Pat Marriott, whose sketchy, almost Phiz-like graphic style has become almost inextricable from Joan Aiken's children's books, new and old. But there's perhaps something even more appropriate about this juxtaposition with the mad, campy, Gothic spirit of Gorey.

As long as I can remember, I've been reading and collecting Aiken's work. Ever since I first entered her strange alternate universe, an early nineteenth-century world situated somewhere between Jane Austen's home counties and Charles Dickens' London, I've felt at home there. As she explains at the opening of the Wolves of Willoughby Chase:
The action of this book takes place in a period of English history that never happened - shortly after the accession to the throne of Good King James III in 1832. At this time, the Channel Tunnel from Dover to Calais having been recently completed, a great many wolves, driven by severe winters, had migrated through the tunnel from Europe and Russia to the British Isles.
The Wolves Chronicles, her most famous novel-sequence, could, I suppose, be described as proto-steampunk in its obsession with the backwards view of what might have been the great nineteenth century if only King James hadn't been forced to flee from his kingdom in 1688, leaving no Dutch King William to win the Battle of the Boyne.

However things might have turned out, they would at the very least have been different.
From book to book, setting to setting - colonial America in Night Birds in Nantucket; a mythic version of Wales in the The Whispering Mountain; the imaginary "Roman American" realm of New Cumbria in The Stolen Lake - there's never a pause in the madcap pace of these adventures. More to the point, as the series progressed over the decades, Aiken was able to use her licence to rewrite history to critique not only Victorian laissez-faire industrialism, but also the brutal colonialism of that and other times.



    The Wolves Chronicles
    [in - approximate - sequential order]:

    Joan Aiken: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962)

  1. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962)
    • The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1962. The Wolves Chronicles, 1. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
  2. This book, the first to be written, is still the most popular for many readers. It's quite restrained by the standards of what was to come from the depths of Aiken's imagination, but that early scene with a prissy young girl being threatened by wolves in a railway carriage has remained in my memory long after the rest of its somewhat melodramatic plot has faded. Evil governesses, haunted mansions, oppressive orphanages, and the constant threat of lethal violence from human and animal alike all feature as motifs in the story, though not nearly in as fully developed a form as they would eventually attain in the later volumes.

    Joan Aiken: Black Hearts in Battersea (1964)

  3. Black Hearts in Battersea (1964)
    • Black Hearts in Battersea. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1965. The Wolves Chronicles, 2. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
  4. The fact that in Aiken's world the Protestant "glorious revolution" of 1688 clearly never took place opens up all sorts of plot possibilities. The second book in her roman-fleuve, Black Hearts in Battersea, concerns a cabal of Hanoverian revolutionaries in London, plotting to bring over Bonnie Prince George, the "true" heir to the throne. There are air balloons, bomb-plots, and missing heirs a-plenty. Simon, the ostensible hero, introduced as a mysterious wild boy in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, turns out (unsurprisingly) to be of noble birth - as well as a dab hand at painting. More to the point, it's this book which introduces the true protagonist of the series, the cheeky and endlessly resourceful Dido Twite.

    Joan Aiken: Night Birds on Nantucket (1966)

  5. Nightbirds on Nantucket (1966)
    • Night Birds on Nantucket. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1966. The Wolves Chronicles, 3. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
  6. Shifting the scene to America, and providing Dido Twite - missing, presumed drowned, at the end of the previous book - with a ten-month period of hibernation on a whaling ship, provides Aiken with scope to introduce even more material from her stock of nineteenth-century fictional tropes. Moby-Dick is firmly in her cross-hairs (though this time the whale is pink - and friendly), but so is the giant gun from Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. Aiken's cannon is pointed at London, however, and threatens not only to end the Stuart dynasty but - even worse - to propel the island of Nantucket onto the Jersey Shore!

    Joan Aiken: The Whispering Mountain (1968)

  7. The Whispering Mountain (1968)
    • The Whispering Mountain. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1968. The Wolves Chronicles, 4. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  8. Though often described as hors-série, given that The Whispering Mountain concerns the doings of Owen Hughes, son of Captain Hughes of the Thrush, the ship which transports Dido Twite from Nantucket to England, it seems only proper to place it here, fourth in the series as well as in order of publication. It can also be seen as the moment when Aiken's somewhat chaotic mélange of styles finally begins to come into balance. Ancient Welsh legends and Bardic lore combine with a race of mysterious dwarfs from Central Asia to tip us from one crisis to another. Only the courage and never-say-die attitude of Owen Hughes and his friend Arabis can save the Harp of Teirtu from the machinations of the callous Marquess of Malyn. It's no surprise that, as well as winning the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, this book was a runner-up for the Carnegie Medal.

    Joan Aiken: The Stolen Lake (1981)

  9. The Stolen Lake (1981)
    • The Stolen Lake. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1981. The Wolves Chronicles, 5. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
  10. Twite's long - and frequently interrupted - voyage home to Britain after her sojourn on Nantucket allowed Aiken scope to "follow Dido Twite around the world." The first of these interludes, The Stolen Lake, is:
    set in an imaginary South American country near Hy Brasil, where a Lost Race civilization is nearing meltdown due to the insatiable demands of its ruler, Queen Ginevra (i.e. Guinevere), who has been drinking the blood of virgins to maintain her Immortality; but the coming of King Arthur returns the tale to ethical normalcy.
    - John Clute, "Joan Aiken." Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
    This complex tale resembles The Whispering Mountain in many ways, but the unabashedly supernatural nature of many of the events shows a certain shift in the tone of the series. What Aiken once played largely for laughs has now become rather more serious.

    Joan Aiken: Limbo Lodge (1999)

  11. Limbo Lodge [aka "Dangerous Games"] (1999)
    • Limbo Lodge. 1999. The Wolves Chronicles, 6. London: Red Fox, 2000.
  12. I suppose I had assumed that Aiken's "Wolves" stories might begin to lose their focus as the decades went by, given her creator's decision to leave Dido Twite still caught in essentially the same net of improbabilities that entangled her in the 60s and 70s. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's hard to avoid the suspicion that Aiken had been reading Ursula Le Guin's 1972 Vietnam parable The Word for World is Forest before venturing into the dark thickets of Limbo Lodge. In some ways this is my favourite of all of her works. Her detestation of the gloomy practices and ideologies of colonialism is spiced with a fascinated exploration of the complex world of the forests of Aratu, island of the Pearl Snakes. The references to "Angria," the Brontës' imaginary kingdom in Africa add piquancy to the usual Aikenian phantasmagoria.

    Joan Aiken: The Cuckoo Tree (1971)

  13. The Cuckoo Tree (1971)
    • The Cuckoo Tree. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1971. The Wolves Chronicles, 7. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
  14. So, to make a long story short, Dido Twite appears to have left Nantucket on the English sloop Thrush, commanded by the "lively, imperturbable" Captain Osbaldeston, who (now styled Osbaldestone with an 'e') was succeeded in Bermuda by the "tall, stern" Captain Hughes (father of Owen, the hero of The Whispering Mountain) who, in his turn, was ordered to set sail for South America, then on to the Pacific in pursuit of the errant Lord Herodsfoot; she then took a side-trip on the Siwara to the island of Aratu, then rejoined the Thrush for the long voyage home to England with the now badly wounded Captain Hughes. Dido seems as imperturbable as ever when confronted by Highwaymen on the road back to London, however. Nor can witches, missing heirs, and hallucinogenic nuts prevent her from once again saving the day for the new king, Richard the IVth.

    Joan Aiken: Dido and Pa (1986)

  15. Dido and Pa (1986)
    • Dido and Pa. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1986. The Wolves Chronicles, 8. London: Red Fox, 1992.
  16. This book follows hard on the heels of The Cuckoo Tree. In fact, it begins with the conversation between Simon (now 6th Duke of Battersea) and Dido Twite intimated at the end of the previous book. For anyone weary of Hanoverian plotters, it comes as a bit of a relief to hear of the death of "Bonnie Prince Georgie" over the sea in Germany. Unfortunately he has a successor in the even more ruthless Margrave Wolfgang von Eisengrim, first cousin to the Pretender. A Prisoner of Zenda-like plot follows, with the attempted fabrication of a gullible double for the newly crowned King Richard, and a series of grim and violent adventures, with an even higher body count than usual. It's good to have roving packs of wolves back in the limelight, and particularly pleasing when they devour Dido's callous and duplicitous father Abednego Twite (whose catchy tunes - and more serious music - may, it is hinted, survive him). Once again virtue triumphs: but only just ...

    Joan Aiken: Midnight is a Place (1974)

  17. Midnight is a Place (1974)
    • Midnight is a Place. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1974. The Wolves Chronicles, 9. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
  18. Like The Whispering Mountain, this book is generally considered hors-série. If it's to be placed anywhere in the sequence, though, it probably has to be here. It's set (for the most part) in the Dickensian industrial town of Blastburn, which played a similar role in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. We're also given a precise date for once: Lucas Bell's first diary entry is dated 1842. Towards the end of the book Murgatroyd's mill has been bought by Lady Murgatroyd's cousin Lord Holdernesse, who seems to be promising a new era of fairness and justice in its appalling confines. It's certainly a very spirited tale, with a good deal of interesting information about Victorian mudlarks and the whole economic machinery of generating cash from scraps and refuse - a process explored with more symbolic intent in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.

    Joan Aiken: Is (1992)

  19. Is [aka: Is Underground] (1992)
    • Is. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1992. The Wolves Chronicles, 10. London: Red Fox, 1993.
  20. Is ... is set at a time when the north of England has seceded from the south, and a grim gradgrind Dystopia feeds (almost literally) on duped children to fuel its industrial mania.
    - John Clute, "Joan Aiken." Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
    What Clute describes as the "Steampunk atmosphere of this tale" perhaps explains Aiken's choice of Is, Dido's younger sister, first introduced (under the name of "slut") as a lowly, starved servant girl in Dido and Pa, as a more appropriate protagonist than her increasingly high-toned sister. It must come after Midnight is a Place, as its principal setting, Blastburn, "has had its name changed to Holdernesse" [p.34], and Lord Holdernesse was just beginning to buy up the area at the end of the previous book. Since then, however, the whole town has been moved underground, and only the ruins of the old order are left outside its grim gates. With a combination of telepathy, grit, and guile, Is manages to upset the plans of her uncle, Roy Twite (otherwise known as "Gold Kingy"), find her missing cousin Arun - but not, unfortunately, his friend Davie Stuart, the heir to the throne, who died in one of the blast furnaces of the new order. The tidings of his death are so shocking to his father, King Richard, that he promptly dies, leaving the throne to descend to his cousin Simon, Duke of Battersea.

    Joan Aiken: Cold Shoulder Road (1995)

  21. Cold Shoulder Road (1995)
    • Cold Shoulder Road. 1995. The Wolves Chronicles, 11. London: Red Fox, 1996.
  22. Cold Shoulder Road follows straight on from Is. The two cousins, Is and Arun, have gone south in search of the latter's mother, and are promptly swept up in a conspiracy to smuggle goods through the Channel Tunnel by a group called the Merry Gentry. Is's abilities as a telepath, developed during his servitude in the mines in the previous book, are one of the few cards LOMAK [the League of Mothers and Kids] have to play in their struggle against all this negative male energy. Truth and justice do eventually prevail, but at a fearful cost in lost lives.

    Joan Aiken: Midwinter Nightingale (2003)

  23. Midwinter Nightingale (2003)
    • Midwinter Nightingale. The Wolves Chronicles, 12. New York: Delacorte Press, 2003.
  24. Some useful details about Aiken's alternative history were revealed in the previous book: for instance, the fact that Charles I was beheaded in this timeline, too, despite his wife Henrietta Maria's attempts to bolster the cause with a ship full of treasure. Midwinter Nightingale is equally informative about the early days of King Richard IV's reign: for instance, that his son Davie Stuart (who died in the north in Is) was the result of an earlier marriage. His new wife, Adelaide, also has children from a previous union (though this was concealed from the King), a fact which provides the narrative impetus for this new story, which runs more or less in parallel with Cold Shoulder Road. Dido is her usual resourceful self, though this time she has werewolves to contend with as well as the more common would-be usurpers.

    Joan Aiken: The Witch of Clatteringshaws (2005)

  25. The Witch of Clatteringshaws (2005)
    • The Witch of Clatteringshaws. 2005. The Wolves Chronicles, 13. A Yearling Book. New York: Random House Children's Books, 2006.
  26. The dynastic and social details in this, Aiken's final novel, have begun to mount up into a kind of anarchy of warring nations and plotters. The scene has shifted to Scotland, which gives her scope for even more experiments with regional vernacular. Short though it is, it contains enough plot for a much longer novel. The witch herself, and her gossipy letters to her various cousins, are perhaps its strongest point. Beyond that, it's clear that even with a new king on the throne - not Simon, who's mercifully been spared the burden - there'll never be peace in the British Isles at this rate. If a little less than an entirely satisfying conclusion to so long and baroque a narrative odyssey, The Witch of Clatteringshaws is a fine book in itself: though possibly intended for slightly younger readers than some of the earlier titles in the series.


Mary Thaler: My Wolves First Editions (2018)

A Few Notes on Chronology:

To say that the timeline of these books is a bit confusing would be to put it mildly. In the first of them, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962), it's stated that the action "takes place ... shortly after the accession to the throne of Good King James III in 1832."
The next clear set of dates are given at the beginning of Dido and Pa (1986), where the updated "family tree of the Dukes of Battersea" gives 1818 as the birthdates for Simon, the 6th Duke, and his twin sister Sophie. It also gives 1840 as the date of the death of the 5th Duke. However, partway through the same book, Sophie states "Next year when I am eighteen ... my money comes out of trust and the lawyers can't stop me using it." [p.262].
There are various problems here. For a start, if the action of Dido and Pa is taking place in 1835 [1818 + 17 for Simon & Sophie's coming of age "next year"], then that means that "Good King James" only reigned for three years, 1832-35. This doesn't seem to fit in very well with the numerous contextual references to the "old King" and his long reign. Above all, it can't be reconciled with the 5th Duke's, Simon's "Uncle William," having "died of the quinsy last winter" [p.11] - i.e. 1834-35. Yet his death date is clearly given as 1840 in the Battersea family tree.
Midnight is a Place is also firmly dated to 1842 by a note in Lucas Bell's diary. So presumably this is meant to be a little later in the reign of Richard IV - or "Davie Jamie Charlie Neddie Georgie Harry Dick Tudor-Stuart" - heir to the throne in The Whispering Mountain (1968), and crowned at the end of The Cuckoo Tree (1971). He dies of grief at the news of the loss of his son and heir Prince Davie at the end of Is (1992), leaving his cousin Simon to take the throne as King Simon the First.
It's hard to see how any of these royal personages can be reconciled with the actual "Old Pretender" James III (1688-1766), or his son Charles III, "Bonnie Prince Charlie" (1720-1788). James II must presumably have continued his reign long after 1688 (he did, after all, live in exile in our own universe until 1701), and must have been succeeded by various "Tudor-Stuart" kings not named James or Richard - though there could certainly have been a few extra Charleses (perhaps four, to match the four Georges?) to bring us all the way to the 1830s. But there's a rather disconcerting aside on p.123 of The Stolen Lake (1981), where King Arthur's wife Queen Ginevra is described as having "very little chin ... like Queen Victoria." So maybe the latter, too, needs to be folded back into the succession: as a wife rather than a reigning monarch, perhaps?
The opening of the Channel Tunnel also seems to shift around in time. It's stated to have recently taken place at the beginning of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, but Arun says, at the beginning of Cold Shoulder Road (1995), "They were still digging it when I ran away from home" [p.2], which is confirmed, in context, to be no more than "five years agone". We're still very much in the era of the original Wolves novel, it would appear, despite all these changes of monarch and scene ...
Clearly Joan Aiken wasn't one of those Emily Brontë-like authors who plot out their timelines with precision in an almanac before sitting down to write. On the contrary, she scattered round dates and dynasties with the careless profusion of an Arthur Conan Doyle, whose "Sherlock Holmes" chronology has baffled experts for well over a century. Nevertheless, I'd like to start the ball rolling with something along the following lines:

A Tentative Wolves Timeline:
[firm dates / conjectured dates]

  • 1818 - Hanoverian wars / Simon & Sophie born
  • 1820 - accession of James III to the throne (wrongly dated to 1832)
  • 1830 - opening of the Channel Tunnel
  • 1832 - events of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
  • 1833 - events of Black Hearts in Battersea
  • 1833 - Dido Twite's ten-month coma aboard a whaling ship
  • 1834 - events of Night Birds on Nantucket
  • 1834 - events of The Whispering Mountain
  • 1834 - Dido Twite starts her voyage home on the Thrush
  • 1834 - events of The Stolen Lake in South America
  • 1834 - events of Limbo Lodge in the Pacific
  • 1834 - Death of William, Duke of Battersea (wrongly dated to 1840)
  • 1835 - Dido Twite returns to England on the Thrush
  • 1835 - events of The Cuckoo Tree / Coronation of Richard IV
  • 1835 - events of Dido and Pa in London
  • late 1830s - secession of the North, East and West from the rest of England
  • 1842 - events of Midnight is a Place in Blastburn
  • 1843 - events of Is in Holdernesse (the new name for Blastburn)
  • 1843 - events of Cold Shoulder Road / Accession of Simon I
  • 1843 - events of Midwinter Nightingale
  • 1844 - events of The Witch of Clatteringshaws / Accession of Piers Ivanhoe le Guichet Crackenthorpe (aka "Woodlouse" or "Cracky Billy") to the throne of England



Giles Gordon, ed.: Shakespeare Stories (1982)
One of Aiken's daughters lives in an old pub nearby - she had to sign a paper saying she wouldn't sell liquor to her guests.
- Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell (July 30th, 1964)
This comment comes in a letter where Bishop is extolling to Lowell the homely atmosphere of the England she's just been visiting: "exactly like being in the pages of a Beatrix Potter book ... all the individual well-known animals, the rabbits playing at evening, all the old characters around."
Everything so minute, and built of flints - looking like soiled ancient hail-stones, to me. But you probably have seen all this long ago.
- Words in Air (2008): 545
Bishop's reference to "Aiken" is (of course) to the poet Conrad Aiken (1889-1973), Joan Aiken's father, now largely forgotten but once a bit of an up-and-comer in the modern poetry stakes, a classmate of T. S. Eliot's at Harvard, and author of Earth Triumphant (1914), along with many other collections of semi-traditional verse.
Aiken married [Canadian poet] Jessie MacDonald in 1912, and the couple moved to England in 1921 with their older two children; John (born 1913) and Jane (born 1917), settling in Rye, East Sussex (where the American novelist Henry James had once lived). The couple's youngest daughter, Joan, was born in Rye in 1924. Conrad Aiken returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a tutor at Harvard from 1927 to 1928.
The couple divorced in 1929. All three of their children became writers, John as a SF writer and editor, Jane Aiken Hodge as a novelist, and Joan as a novelist and children's writer.

This rather checkered heritage does, however, offer certain clues to the distinctly transatlantic flavour of much of the latter's writing. Though born in the English Home Counties, she never seemed quite native to the place - she sounded more like a writer-in-residence than a born-and-bred insider.

Perhaps that's what appealed to me so much about her when I first read her work as a child. She didn't seem to belong - an important attribute for all us deracinated colonials, scattered across the globe by the imperial whims of our forebears.

I remember once, in some anthology in the School Library, running across a story by Joan Aiken about the discovery of a lost play by Shakespeare - a version of "Robin Hood", no less - which came to light in a lumber room and was sold to prevent the demolition of the old stately home it was in. This story delighted me greatly - especially the pieces of incidental pastiche she quoted from "The Tragicall Historie of Robin Hoode."
Act I, Scene I. Sherwood Forest. Enter John Lackland, De Bracy, Sheriff of Nottingham, Knights, Lackeys and attendants.

John L.Good sirs, the occasion of our coming hither
Is, since our worthy brother Coeur de Lion
Far from our isle now wars on Paynim soil,
The apprehension of that recreant knave
Most caitiff outlaw who is known by some
As Robin Locksley; by others Robin Hood;
More, since our coffers gape with idle locks
The forfeiture of his ill-gotten gains.
Thus Locksley's stocks will stock our locks enow
While he treats air beneath the forest bough. ...
I looked for it in vain in the rather po-faced pages of the collection pictured above, Shakespeare Stories, full of rather contorted tales-obliquely-invoking-the-Bard by what was then, half a century ago, considered the cream of the British literary establishment.


Joan Aiken: All But a Few (1974)


I did eventually locate it, though, as "A Room full of Leaves", right at the back of her early book All But a Few. It was worth ten of any of the efforts in the more official volume (though one or two of them weren't so bad, either).


Joan Aiken: The Haunting of Lamb House (1991)


She didn't quite fit - and that was her charm. She wasn't high culture, but she wasn't simply a children's writer, either: there was, after all, that Henry James connection. She even wrote a novel about him:
The Haunting of Lamb House ... set in the actual Lamb House in Rye, exposes two of its real-life inhabitants – Henry James ... and E. F. Benson – to the ghost of an eighteenth-century child who has had to endure the breakup of his family.
Perhaps it did all have something to do with the strange, haunted restlessness of her father Conrad. It's not as if it was unmotivated:
On February 27, 1901, [Conrad's father] William Ford Aiken murdered his wife and then committed suicide. According to his 1952 autobiography, Ushant, Aiken, then 11 years old, heard the two gunshots and discovered the bodies immediately thereafter.
... Though Aiken was reluctant to speak of his early trauma and ensuing psychological problems, he acknowledged that his writings were strongly influenced by his studies of Sigmund Freud, Carl G. Jung, Otto Rank, Ferenczi, Adler, and other depth psychologists. It was not until the publication of his autobiography ... that Aiken revealed the emotional challenges that he had battled for much of his adult life.


It's hard to know just what effect these revelations had on his children - though there may be some clues in Joan's rather sinister novella Voices, set in a haunted house in the imaginary town of Dune, which seems to parallel the role of Rye in her own life (as does the absentee writer father of the narrator).

Fortunately, by then Joan had already begun to carve out her own career as a writer:
Writing stories from an early age, she finished her first full-length novel when she was sixteen and had her first short story for adults accepted for publication when she was seventeen. In 1941 her first children's story was broadcast on the BBC's Children's Hour.
Aiken worked for the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) in London between 1943 and 1949. In September 1945 she married Ronald George Brown, a journalist who was also working at UNIC. They had two children before he died in 1955.
After her husband's death, Aiken joined the magazine Argosy, where she worked in various editorial capacities and, she later said, learned her trade as a writer. The magazine was one of many in which she published short stories between 1955 and 1960. During this time she also published her first two collections of children's stories and began work on a children's novel, initially titled Bonnie Green, which was later published in 1962 as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. By then she was able to write full-time from home, producing two or three books a year for the rest of her life ...
Whatever the motivations behind it, Joan Aiken's writing is a joy. I'd feared, when starting to reread it in preparation for this post, that the enchantment might have worn off since I first encountered it. But it doesn't seem at all pinchbeck to me. Maybe you had to be there, but for the bookish child of today, I suspect she could still be a shining star.

Perhaps that great enthusiast John Clute puts it best, in his SFE article:
Throughout her career Aiken generated work of an almost relentless fertility. There is a passionate knowingness in her invention of small details that is clearly a matter of her own satisfaction – few young readers would know, for instance, that the "hobey" played by Dido Twite's father is an oboe, the French hautbois having, in this world, been differently Englished. Her feverishness may derive to some degree from the example of her father, though she maintained strict professional control over even the most exuberant moments; the loving urgency of her depiction of character and landscape and plot seemed an intrinsic gift.
Peace to her ashes. But then, like all true writers, she can't really be said to be dead. Her work will certainly survive her.

Joan Aiken & family in their caravan (1951)
l-to-r: Joan Aiken, Taffy the cat, John & Elizabeth, Ron Brown





Rod Delroy: Joan Aiken

Joan Delano Aiken
(1924-2004)


    Novels:

    The Paget family (1978-82):

  1. The Smile of the Stranger (1978)
  2. The Lightning Tree [aka "The Weeping Ash"] (1980)
  3. The Young Lady from Paris [aka "The Girl from Paris"] (1982)

  4. "Jane Austen" novels (1984-2000):

  5. Mansfield Revisited (1984)
  6. Jane Fairfax: The Secret Story of the Second Heroine in Jane Austen's Emma (1990)
  7. Eliza’s Daughter (1994)
  8. Emma Watson: The Watsons Completed (1996)
  9. The Youngest Miss Ward (1998)
  10. Lady Catherine's Necklace (2000)

  11. Miscellaneous:

  12. The Silence of Herondale (1964)
  13. The Fortune Hunters (1965)
  14. Trouble With Product X [aka "Beware of the Bouquet"] (1966)
  15. Hate Begins at Home [aka "Dark Interval"] (1967)
  16. The Ribs of Death [aka "The Crystal Crow"] (1967)
  17. The Embroidered Sunset (1970)
  18. The Butterfly Picnic [aka "Cluster of Separate Sparks"] (1972)
  19. Died On A Rainy Sunday (1972)
  20. Voices in an Empty House (1975)
  21. Castle Barebane (1976)
  22. The Five-Minute Marriage (1977)
  23. Last Movement (1977)
  24. Foul Matter (1983)
  25. Deception [aka "If I were You"] (1987)
  26. The Haunting of Lamb House (1987)
  27. Blackground (1989)
  28. Morningquest (1992)

  29. Children's Books:

    Wolves Chronicles (1962-2005):

  30. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962)
    • The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1962. The Wolves Chronicles, 1. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
  31. Black Hearts in Battersea (1964)
    • Black Hearts in Battersea. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1965. The Wolves Chronicles, 2. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
  32. Nightbirds on Nantucket (1966)
    • Night Birds on Nantucket. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1966. The Wolves Chronicles, 3. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
  33. The Whispering Mountain (1968)
    • The Whispering Mountain. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. The Wolves Chronicles: prequel. 1968. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  34. The Cuckoo Tree (1971)
    • The Cuckoo Tree. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1971. The Wolves Chronicles, 6. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
  35. Midnight is a Place (1974)
    • Midnight is a Place. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. The Wolves Chronicles: outlier. 1974. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
  36. The Stolen Lake (1981)
    • The Stolen Lake. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1981. The Wolves Chronicles, 4. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
  37. Dido and Pa (1986)
    • Dido and Pa. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1986. The Wolves Chronicles, 7. London: Red Fox, 1992.
  38. Is [aka: Is Underground] (1992)
    • Is. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1992. The Wolves Chronicles, 8. London: Red Fox, 1993.
  39. Cold Shoulder Road (1995)
    • Cold Shoulder Road. 1995. The Wolves Chronicles, 9. London: Red Fox, 1996.
  40. Limbo Lodge [aka "Dangerous Games"] (1999)
    • Limbo Lodge. 1999. The Wolves Chronicles, 5. London: Red Fox, 2000.
  41. Midwinter Nightingale (2003)
    • Midwinter Nightingale. The Wolves Chronicles, 10. New York: Delacorte Press, 2003.
  42. The Witch of Clatteringshaws (2005)
    • The Witch of Clatteringshaws. 2005. The Wolves Chronicles, 11. A Yearling Book. New York: Random House Children's Books, 2006.

  43. Arabel and Mortimer (1972-95):

  44. Arabel's Raven (1972)
  45. Escaped Black Mamba (1973)
  46. The Bread Bin (1974)
  47. Mortimer's Tie (1976)
  48. Mortimer and the Sword Excalibur (1979)
  49. The Spiral Stair (1979)
  50. The Mystery of Mr Jones's Disappearing Taxi (1982)
  51. Mortimer's Portrait on Glass (1982)
  52. Mortimer's Cross (1983)
  53. Mortimer Says Nothing [stories] (1985)
  54. Arabel and Mortimer (1992)
  55. Mortimer's Mine (1994)
  56. Mayhem in Rumbury (1995)

  57. The Felix trilogy (1978-88):

  58. Go Saddle the Sea (1978)
    • Go Saddle the Sea. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1978. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
  59. Bridle the Wind (1983)
    • Bridle the Wind. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1983. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
  60. The Teeth of the Gale (1988)
    • The Teeth of the Gale. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1988. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990.

  61. St Ives Series (2000-02):

  62. In Thunder's Pocket. Illustrated by Caroline Crossland (2000)
  63. The Song of Mat and Ben. Illustrated by Caroline Crossland (2000)
  64. Bone and Dream. Illustrated by Caroline Crossland (2002)

  65. Miscellaneous novels:

  66. The Kingdom and the Cave (1960)
  67. Night Fall (1969)
  68. The Shadow Guests (1980)
    • The Shadow Guests. 1980. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.
  69. The Erl King’s Daughter. Illustrated by Paul Warren (1988)
  70. Voices [aka "Return to Harken House"] (1988)
    • Voices. Hauntings, 3. London: Hippo Books, 1988.
  71. The Shoemaker’s Boy (1991)
  72. The Midnight Moropus (1993)
  73. The Cockatrice Boys (1996)
  74. The Jewel Seed (1997)
  75. The Scream (2001)

  76. Stories:

  77. All You've Ever Wanted and Other Stories (1953)
    • Selected in: All But a Few. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1953, 1955, 1971. A Puffin Book. 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  78. More Than You Bargained For and Other Stories (1955)
    • Selected in: All But a Few. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1953, 1955, 1971. A Puffin Book. 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  79. Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home (1968)
  80. A Small Pinch of Weather and Other Stories (1969)
  81. The Windscreen Weepers (1969)
  82. Smoke from Cromwell's Time and Other Stories (1970)
  83. All and More (1971)
    • Selected in: All But a Few. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1953, 1955, 1971. A Puffin Book. 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  84. The Green Flash (1971)
  85. A Harp of Fishbones (1972)
    • A Harp of Fishbones and Other Stories. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1972. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
  86. All But a Few [aka "Not What You Expected"] (1974)
    • All But a Few. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1953, 1955, 1971. A Puffin Book. 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  87. A Bundle of Nerves (1976)
    • A Bundle of Nerves: Stories of Horror, Suspense & Fantasy. 1976. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  88. The Faithless Lollybird and Other Stories (1977)
  89. The Far Forests (1977)
  90. A Touch of Chill (1979)
  91. A Touch of Chill: Tales for Sleepless Nights (1980)
  92. Up the Chimney Down (1984)
  93. A Goose on Your Grave (1987)
  94. Deception [aka "If I Were You"] (1988)
  95. Return to Harken House (1988)
  96. A Foot in the Grave (1989)
  97. Give Yourself a Fright (1989)
  98. Shadows & Moonshine (1990)
  99. A Fit of Shivers (1990)
  100. The Winter Sleepwalker. Illustrated by Quentin Blake (1991)
  101. A Creepy Company (1993)
    • A Creepy Company. 1993. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
  102. A Handful of Gold. Illustrated by Quentin Blake (1995)
  103. Dead Man's Lane (1995)
    • Included in: A Creepy Company. 1993. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
  104. Moon Cake and Other Stories (1998)
  105. Ghostly Beasts (2002)
  106. Snow Horse and Other Stories (2004)
  107. Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories [Virago Modern Classics] (2008)
  108. The Monkey's Wedding and Other Stories (2011)
  109. The Gift Giving [Virago Modern Classics]. Illustrated by Peter Bailey (2016)
  110. The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories (2016)
  111. Stoneywish and Other Chilling Stories (2020)
  112. A Ghostly Gallery and Fantastic Fables [E-book]. Cover illustration by Pat Marriott (2023)
  113. Siren Stories & Weather Witches and Wise Women [E-book]. Cover illustration by Pat Marriott (2023)
  114. Tales of London Town. Illustrated by Annabel Pearl (2024)

  115. Picture Books:

  116. A Necklace of Raindrops (1968)
    • A Necklace of Raindrops and Other Stories. Pictures by Jan Pienkowski. 1968. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  117. The Kingdom Under the Sea and Other Stories (1971)
    • The Kingdom Under the Sea and Other Stories. Pictures by Jan Pienkowski. 1971. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
  118. Mice and Mendelson. Illustrated by Babette Cole (1974)
  119. Tale of a One-Way Street. Illustrated by Jan Pienkowski (1978)
  120. The Kitchen Warriors (1983)
  121. Fog Hounds Wind Cat Sea Mice [aka "Fog Hounds and Other Stories"] (1984)
  122. The Last Slice of Rainbow and Other Stories (1985)
  123. Past Eight O'Clock. Illustrated by Jan Pienkowski (1986)
  124. The Moon's Revenge. Illustrated by Alan Lee (1986)
  125. Helena and the Wild Man [Oxford Reader] (2000)
  126. Serve Me Stefan [Oxford Reader] (2000)
  127. Wise Girl [Oxford Reader] (2000)
  128. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Illustrated by Belinda Downes (2002)
  129. The Wooden Dragon. Illustrated by Bee Willey (2004)

  130. Plays:

  131. Winterthing & The Mooncusser’s Daughter (1972 & 1973)
    • Winterthing & The Mooncusser’s Daughter: Two Plays for Children. Music by John Sebastian Brown. 1972 & 1973. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
  132. Street (1978)
  133. The Tinker’s Curse (1978)
  134. Moon Mill (1982)
  135. Hatching Trouble (BBC: 1991)

  136. Poetry:

  137. The Skin Spinners (1976)

  138. Non-fiction:

  139. The Way to Write for Children (1982)
  140. [with John and Jane Aiken Hodge] Conrad Aiken Remembered (1989)

  141. Translation:

  142. The Angel Inn [Translated from the Comtesse de Segur] (1976)


Lizza Aiken: Joan Aiken's books (2024)





Sunday, April 13, 2025

Favourite Children's Authors: Laura Ingalls Wilder


Laura Ingalls Wilder: Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography (1930 / 2014)


It was Wednesday the 6th of October, 2021. Auckland was in the middle of yet another COVID lockdown. We were feeling a bit peeved because (as usual) it seemed to be just us again: stuck in our bubbles, cycling through the same old bits of dross on TV, while the rest of the country went out to meet one another and enjoy the Spring weather.

But, as it turned out, we had not been forgotten! A care package arrived from my brother-in-law Greg and his partner Celia in Martinborough: two boxes of books from the Book Grocer.

I seized on the box of biographies, Bronwyn the box of craft books. Besides a couple of celebrity pop star memoirs, which didn't really take my fancy, my box contained:
  1. Frederick Forsyth: The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue (2015)
  2. Caroline Fraser: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017)
  3. Nelson Mandela: Dare Not Linger: The Presidential Years (2016)
  4. Philip Norman: Paul McCartney: The Life (2016)
  5. Ramie Targoff: Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna (2018)
  6. Frances Wilson: Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey (2016)
I wrote a post about the last one in the list a few years ago, but haven't really had a chance to do justice to any of the others until now.

It's probably only right that I should confess that the first book that fell open in my hand was the biography of Paul McCartney, Since then I've gone even further down that particular rabbit hole by purchasing Irish poet Paul Muldoon's weirdly compelling edition of the former's collected lyrics:


Paul McCartney: The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. Ed. Paul Muldoon (2021)


Getting back to the point, though, I was especially excited to see there a copy of Caroline Fraser's Pulitzer-Prize-winning biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, an author whom I read a good deal of as a child once I managed to get over my prejudice against such a "girly-looking" set of books.



My mother and sister were particular devotees of her work; all of us watched the saccharine, Michael Landon-dominated Little House on the Prairie TV series with gritted teeth, amid repeated asseverations that the books were "not like that."


Blanche Hanalis: Little House on the Prairie (1974-83)
l-to-r: Michael Landon as 'Charles Ingalls', Melissa Sue Anderson as 'Mary', Karen Grassle as 'Caroline',
Rachel Lindsay Greenbush as 'Carrie', & Melissa Gilbert as 'Laura'





Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Little House Books (1932-43)


Here they all are, in the 1970s Puffin copies we read, with the charming pencil and charcoal illustrations commissioned from American artist Garth Williams for a uniform edition in the late 1940s / early 1950s:
  1. Little House in the Big Woods (1932)
  2. Farmer Boy (1933)
  3. Little House on the Prairie (1935)
  4. On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937)
  5. By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939)
  6. The Long Winter (1940)
  7. Little Town on the Prairie (1941)
  8. These Happy Golden Years (1943)

Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Little House Books (1932-43)


The picture directly above, from Roslyn Jolly's own book-related blog, comes from a post written during the 2020 COVID lockdown in Australia. She, too, saw certain parallels between the privations described in Wilder's books and the strange new lifestyle imposed on us by the virus mandates:
The Long Winter must have made a great impression on me, because I found myself thinking of it almost as we started to find the shape of our days under the new COVID-19 restrictions. No travel. No leaving the house except for essential purposes. No meetings with anyone outside the household. The restlessness of being cooped up. Tensions flaring within the family. A growing sense of isolation from the rest of society. I’d encountered it all before, in Wilder’s book.
That does seem to be a common theme when these books are discussed - not so much the moral lessons inculcated by them, as their direct appeals to shared experience. The Long Winter is probably my favourite among them, too. It's so much more condensed and single-minded than the others - and the settlers' failure to heed the old Indian's warning at the beginning gives a satisfying sense of poetic justice to the whole story.




Wiliam Anderson: Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography (1992)


Laura Ingalls Wilder scholarship, too, is certainly the province of some very engaged and single-minded enthusiasts. Before Caroline Fraser's biography was published in 2017, the main sources of information about the author were the biographies by William Anderson - who also edited Wilder's Selected Letters (2017) - and Pamela Smith Hill.


Pamela Smith Hill: Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life (2007)


Despite the fact that Hill also edited the 2014 annotated edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder's original 1930 autobiography, Pioneer Girl, I was surprised to find virtually no reference to her in Fraser's work. She isn't mentioned in the index, and - since Fraser's book has notes but no bibliography - it's a little difficult even to locate the details of the annotated Pioneer Girl there, either.



Am I wrong to suspect some friction between the two? It certainly looks a bit like that. Fraser - one of whose previous books was entitled Rewilding the World - has solid credentials in the environmental movement. Hill, by contrast, is a children's writer and creative writing teacher with more pronounced roots in the American MidWest.



I guess it came as a surprise to many when Laura Ingalls Wilder achieved canonisation in the Library of America series in 2012, the first purely children's writer to do so - though she's since been joined there by Madeleine L'Engle and Virginia Hamilton. The editor of their two 'Little House' volumes was Caroline Fraser:


Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Little House Books (Vol. 1: 2012)



Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Little House Books (Vol. 2: 2012)


Hill's version of Pioneer Girl came out two years after this. So far as I can tell, it makes no reference to the Library of America edition: either by citing its (very useful) chronology or its bibliographical details. Hill's latest word on the subject is, however, due to appear from the University of Nebraska Press in a couple of months time:


Pamela Smith Hill: Too Good to Be Altogether Lost (2025)


Curiously enough, Caroline Fraser - but not Pamela Smith Hill - was asked to contribute to a 2017 symposium of essays on Wilder which appeared under the same auspices as the annotated Pioneer Girl.



And, lest that be seen as an accidental omission, it's perhaps equally significant that the editors of the "Pioneer Girl project" have gone on to supplement Pamela Smith Hill's syncretic text of Wilder's original scribbled pencil manuscript with new editions of the all the various overlapping versions of her autobiography.


Nancy Tystad Koupal, ed: Pioneer Girl: The Revised Texts (2022)

Nancy Tystad Koupal, ed: Pioneer Girl: The Path into Fiction (2023)


Mind you, I could easily be seeing friction where there's actually mutual respect - either that, or complete indifference. I somehow doubt it, though. The world of scholarship is not exactly replete with constructive, happy rivalries. Caroline Fraser's mainstream triumphs - the Library of America, the Pulitzer Prize - have ended up putting Pamela Smith Hill rather in the shade, whether intentionally or not.




Laura Ingalls Wilder: Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography (2014)


The real winners, though, are undoubtedly readers such as myself. I certainly found the annotated Pioneer Girl a wonderfully immersive book. As Marthe Bijman remarks in her review of it on the Seven Circumstances site:
The text of Wilder’s original Pioneer Girl memoir is reproduced in the book, and contrasted and highlighted with copious, and I do mean copious, annotations, references and explanations.

Laura Ingalls Wilder: Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography (2014)


It is hard to fault in that regard. The maps are clear and well-placed, and the pictures - such as the Helen Sewell illustration above - judiciously chosen for maximum impact. As something of a connoisseur of annotated editions, I'd have to rate this one in the top ten percent for both entertainment and information. It's perhaps a little large for casual reading, but then that is the norm for such books.

Bijman stresses that, while "Pioneer Girl is much more complicated and personal than the books":
This is the definitive guide to Laura Ingalls Wilder and her life from to 1869 in Kansas to 1888 in Dakota Territory. Almost every word in the memoir has been annotated and the references are detailed, with documents, photos, registers and archival materials. Yes, the Little House books have lost some of their charm because I now understand they are more fiction than autobiographical – but there is still magic in the books.


As for Caroline Fraser's work, the chorus of praise it's attracted really speaks for itself. It should be stressed, however, that this is a warts-and-all biography which omits none of the unfortunate contradictions between the reality of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life and the neat resolutions imposed on it by her autobiographical fictions.

It's not so much a simple life-and-times, as an expert weaving of American history in all its variety and violence into an account of the crippling hardships suffered by the Ingalls family and their neighbours during the late, post-Civil War period of Westward Expansion.


John Gast: American Progress (1872)


From the Dakota war of 1862, with its barbarous aftermath of mass executions and enforced displacement of the Sioux people; through the homesteading era, with its droughts and locust infestations; all the way to the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Fraser points out the hidden significances behind Wilder's apparently ingenuous and factual books.



In particular, she traces the vexed relationship between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, herself a celebrated writer in the 1920s and 30s - though she's now better known as one of the ideologues (along with Ayn Rand) behind the American libertarian movement.

Lane was both her mother's Maxwell Perkins, the editorial presence who inspired and helped to shape her books, and her nemesis: a conscienceless spirit of misrule, who alternately longed for and repudiated her family but could never really separate herself from them.



All in all, it's a rattling good yarn - every bit as good as any of Wilder's own. It's hard to imagine any serious study or appreciation of the Little House books being possible in the future without a thorough grounding in Caroline Fraser's insights. But it's also easy to see how much it must have offended some of Wilder's more conservative admirers when it first came out.

Given that Fraser's previous books include God's Perfect Child (1999), an account of her upbringing in the Christian Science Church - described as follows in a New York Times review by Philip Zaleski: "Few darker portraits of [Mary Baker Eddy] have emerged since the days when Mark Twain called her a brass god with clay legs" - her status as a tearer-down of false gods is undeniable.


Caroline Fraser: God's Perfect Child (1999)


That great sceptic and authority on the lunatic fringe, Martin Gardner, said of her:
No one has written more entertainingly and accurately than Fraser about the history of Christian Science ... No one has more colorfully covered the ... endless bitter schisms and bad judgments that have dogged it ...
Anita Sethi, in her turn, has praised Prairie Fires for demonstrating that "Memories can be both 'treasures' and 'consuming fires of torment':
Caroline Fraser’s rigorously researched biography shows how [Laura Ingalls Wilder]’s life was so much more painful than it appears in her autobiographical writings ... At its best, the book displays both the perils and the power of memory.



Christine Woodside: Libertarians on the Prairie (2016)


In the dark days we're living through at present, with a USA which has revived its delusions of Manifest Destiny in a globalised world no longer equipped to co-exist with them, the parable of Laura Ingalls Wilder's actual life, and self-created legend, seems to have particular significance.

American exceptionalism; American lives; American this, that and the other ... the unfortunate elision of this adjective with the word "human" is something we've had to put up with for many years now. But whether any of us like it or not, I doubt that this collective mirage can survive for much longer.

Americans are notorious for being both their own bitterest critics and their own windiest boosters. It's nice to take confirmation from Caroline Fraser's excellent, hard-hitting book, that the defenders of the former tradition are alive and well and ready to do battle for the meaning of their history - which may, ominously, turn out to be the shape of their own future.


Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Little House Books: Boxed Set (Library of America: 2012)





Laura Ingalls Wilder (1885)

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder
(1867-1957)


    The Little House books:

  1. Little House in the Big Woods. Illustrated by Helen Sewell (1932)
    • Little House in the Big Woods. 1932. Illustrated by Garth Williams. Puffin Books. 1963. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  2. Farmer Boy. Illustrated by Helen Sewell (1933)
    • Farmer Boy. 1933. Illustrated by Garth Williams. Puffin Books. 1972. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
  3. Little House on the Prairie. Illustrated by Helen Sewell (1935)
    • Little House on the Prairie. 1935. Illustrated by Garth Williams. Puffin Books. 1964. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
  4. On the Banks of Plum Creek. Illustrated by Helen Sewell & Mildred Boyle (1937)
    • On the Banks of Plum Creek. 1937. Rev. ed. 1953. Illustrated by Garth Williams. Puffin Books. 1965. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
  5. By the Shores of Silver Lake. Illustrated by Helen Sewell & Mildred Boyle (1939)
    • By the Shores of Silver Lake. 1939. Illustrated by Garth Williams. Puffin Books. 1967. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.
  6. The Long Winter. Illustrated by Helen Sewell & Mildred Boyle (1940)
    • The Long Winter. 1940. Illustrated by Garth Williams. Puffin Books. 1968. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980.
  7. Little Town on the Prairie. Illustrated by Helen Sewell & Mildred Boyle (1941)
    • Little Town on the Prairie. 1941. Illustrated by Garth Williams. Puffin Books. 1969. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  8. These Happy Golden Years. Illustrated by Helen Sewell & Mildred Boyle (1943)
    • These Happy Golden Years. 1943. Illustrated by Garth Williams. Puffin Books. 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.
  9. The Little House Books, Vol. 1. Ed. Caroline Fraser. Library of America, 229 (2012)
    1. Little House in the Big Woods (1932)
    2. Farmer Boy (1933)
    3. Little House on the Prairie (1935)
    4. On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937)
    • The Little House Books, Volume One. Ed. Caroline Fraser. 2 vols. The Library of America, 229. [‘Little House in the Big Woods,’ 1932; ‘Farmer Boy,’ 1933;‘Little House on the Prairie,’ 1935; ‘On the Banks of Plum Creek,’ 1937]. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2012.
  10. The Little House Books, Vol. 2. Ed. Caroline Fraser. Library of America, 230 (2012)
    1. By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939)
    2. The Long Winter (1940)
    3. Little Town on the Prairie (1941)
    4. These Happy Golden Years (1943)
    5. The First Four Years (1971)
    • The Little House Books, Volume Two. Ed. Caroline Fraser. 2 vols. The Library of America, 230. [‘By the Shores of Silver Lake,’ 1939; ‘The Long Winter,’ 1940; ‘Little Town on the Prairie,’ 1941; ‘These Happy Golden Years,’ 1943; ‘The First Four Years,’ 1971]. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2012.

  11. Published posthumously:

  12. On the Way Home: The Diary Of A Trip From South Dakota To Mansfield, Missouri in 1894. Ed. Rose Wilder Lane (1962)
  13. The First Four Years (1971)
    • The First Four Years. 1971. Epilogue by Rose Wilder Lane from "On the Way Home". 1962. 1973. Puffin Books. 1978. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
  14. West From Home: Letters Of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915. Ed. Roger Lea MacBride (1974)
  15. A Little House Sampler. With Rose Wilder Lane. Ed. William Anderson (1988 / 1989)
  16. Little House in the Ozarks: The Rediscovered Writings. Ed. Stephen W. Hines (1991)
  17. Laura Ingalls Wilder & Rose Wilder Lane, Letters 1937–1939. Ed. Timothy Walch (1992)
  18. Laura Ingalls Wilder Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks. Ed. Stephen W. Hines (1997)
  19. A Little House Reader: A Collection of Writings. Ed. William Anderson (1998)
  20. Laura's Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Ed. William Anderson (1998)
  21. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Fairy Poems. Ed. Stephen W. Hines. Illustrated by Richard Hull (1998)
  22. A Little House Traveler: Writings from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Journeys Across America (2006)
    • On the Way Home (1894)
    • West from Home (1915)
    • The Road Back Home (1931)
  23. Writings to Young Women. Ed. Stephen W. Hines (2006)
    1. On Wisdom and Virtues
    2. On Life as a Pioneer Woman
    3. As Told by Her Family, Friends, and Neighbors
  24. Before the Prairie Books: The Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder 1911–1916: The Small Farm. Ed. Dan L. White (2010)
  25. Before the Prairie Books: The Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder 1917–1918: The War Years. Ed. Dan L. White (2010)
  26. Before the Prairie Books: The Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder 1919–1920: The Farm Home. Ed. Dan L. White (2010)
  27. Before the Prairie Books: The Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder 1921–1924: A Farm Woman. Ed. Dan L. White (2010)
  28. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Most Inspiring Writings: Covering the Years 1911 Through 1924. Ed. Dan L. White (2015)
  29. Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Pioneer Girl's World View: Selected Newspaper Columns (2014)
  30. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography. Ed. Pamela Smith Hill (2014)
    • Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography. Ed. Pamela Smith Hill. A Publication of the Pioneer Girl Project: Nancy Tystad Koupal, Director; Rodger Hartley, Associate Editor; Jeanne Kilen Ode, Associate Editor. Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2014.
  31. The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Pioneer's Correspondence. Ed. William Anderson (2017)
  32. Pioneer Girl: The Revised Texts. Ed. Nancy Tystad Koupal (2022)
  33. Pioneer Girl: The Path into Fiction. Ed. Nancy Tystad Koupal (2022)

  34. Secondary:

  35. Zochert, Donald. Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1976)
  36. Anderson, William. Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography (1992)
  37. Holtz, William. The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane (1993)
  38. Miller, John E. Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman Behind the Legend (1998)
  39. Hill, Pamela Smith. Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life (2007)
  40. Miller, John E. Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane: Authorship, Place, Time, and Culture (2008)
  41. Pioneer Girl Perspectives: Exploring Laura Ingalls Wilder. Ed. Nancy Tystad Koupal (2017)
  42. Fraser, Caroline. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Metropolitan Book. New York: Henry Holt And Company, 2017.
  43. Hill, Pamela Smith. Too Good to Be Altogether Lost: Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books (2025)