How autobiographical are Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books?

Question

The [Little House series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Little_House_on_the_Prairie_books) of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, including perhaps the most famous *Little House on the Prairie*, tell the story of her childhood in the American West.**How autobiographical are they, really?** How closely do they stick to her real experiences, and how much of the writing is embellished or made-up incidents?(I'm mostly asking about the 8-9 original books written by LIW herself. The books written by other authors after her death presumably have much higher fiction-to-fact ratios.)

Answer 1

I recently read a couple books about this subject called Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Biography by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Pamela Smith Hill and Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser.

The first book Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Biography includes one of the first drafts of Laura's writing, which she called Pioneer Girl. The stories included in this book are probably the closest to reality, as after Laura wrote Pioneer Girl, her daughter Rose, who was an accomplished author, gave a lot of suggestions about how to make the material more marketable. Laura's writing took quite some time to be accepted by a publisher and in the interim, both she and Rose made many changes to the stories. As a result, not all of the stories included in the Little House series are 100% autobiographical. For example, the character Nellie Olsen seems to follow Laura around wherever she moves. In reality, however, the character Nellie Olsen was based off a few different girls that Laura met in her childhood. In addition, when Laura and Rose were writing and editing the stories, they included a story about Pa having passed by the house of some famed murderers and barely escaping death. Because of the timing of when these murderers were committing their crimes, Pa never would have been in the area. I think this particular story was never included in the published work, as they realized the stories were best suited for children. This book gives more details about comparing and contrasting reality with fiction in Laura's life.

If you want to read more about exactly what happened to Laura, the book Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder gives a lot more detail about what her life was really like. It fills in the gaps of her life and gives the real reasons behind all the moves her family made. When I read it, I was really surprised by some things. Laura must have wanted to keep some things private, as her family really struggled in poverty for most of her childhood. I think most of the individual stories about Ma slapping a bear, making syrup, and gathering Indian beads are true. Perhaps what makes the Little House stories less autobiographical is how much they leave out or "shade" the truth instead of what is included in them.

Hope that is of help to you!