This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2015) |
![]() Front dust jacket with Williams' illustration | |
Author | Laura Ingalls Wilder |
---|---|
Illustrator | Garth Williams [1] |
Country | United States |
Series | Little House |
Genre | Children's historical novel, realistic fiction Family saga Western |
Publisher | Harper & Row |
Publication date | February 1, 1971 [2] |
Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Pages | 134 pp. [1] |
ISBN | 0060264268 |
OCLC | 855276032 |
LC Class | PZ7.W6461 Fi [1] |
Preceded by | These Happy Golden Years |
Followed by | On the Way Home |
The First Four Years is an autobiographical novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in 1971 and commonly considered the last of nine books in the Little House series. The series had initially concluded [lower-alpha 1] at eight children's novels following Wilder to mature age and her marriage with Almanzo Wilder.
Roger Lea MacBride found the work in the belongings of Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, while going through her estate after her death in 1968. Wilder wrote all of her books in pencil on dime store tablets, and this one's manuscript was found in manuscript form as Wilder had written it.[ citation needed ]
It is not clear whether Wilder intended this first draft to be a ninth book in the Little House series, or possibly a standalone novel for adults. Much of the material is more for an adult audience than anything in her Little House books. She seems to have written the extant first draft sometime around 1940, and then apparently lost interest in the project. MacBride, Lane's adopted grandson, and executor of her estate, made a decision to publish this novel without any editing (except for minor spelling errors) so it came directly from Wilder's pencil to the written page. Because she never reworked the manuscript - and Lane never edited it as she had her mother's previously published works, the novel is less polished in style than the books of the Little House series, but it is still unmistakably Wilder's writing.[ citation needed ]
The novel gets its title from a promise Laura made to Almanzo when they became engaged. She did not want to be a farmer, but decided to try farming for three years.
Laura keeps house and Almanzo tends the land and the livestock. They go on frequent pony rides together. At the end of the first year, just as the wheat is ready to harvest, a serious hailstorm destroys the entire crop, which would have made approximately three thousand dollars and paid off their debts on farm equipment and their house.
Faced with mounting debt, Almanzo mortgages the homestead claim. He and Laura have to live on it as a condition of the mortgage, so they rent out their house on the tree claim and Almanzo builds a small home on the homestead claim. Their daughter, Rose, is born in December. At the end of the second year, they harvest a fair wheat crop, and share the proceeds of the wheat sale with the tree claim's renter, making enough money themselves to pay some smaller debts.
In December of the third year, both Laura and Almanzo contract diphtheria, and Almanzo suffers a complication which leaves him permanently impaired physically. The renter decides to leave, and as Almanzo is unable to work both pieces of land, they sell the homestead claim and move back to their first house.
Laura invests money in a flock of sheep. The wool repays her initial investment, leaving only enough to pay the interest on their debts. Meanwhile, the wheat and oats grow well, but are totally ruined just before harvest after several days of hot, dry wind.
At the end of the third year, though farming has not yet been a success, Laura and Almanzo agree to continue for one more year, a "year of grace", in Laura's words, since they have no other prospects and Almanzo believes they just need one good year to turn things around. Unfortunately, hot winds again ruin the next planting of wheat and oats. Their unnamed son is born in August but dies a few weeks later. Finally, their house is destroyed by a flash fire.
Despite this, the novel ends at the close of the fourth year on an optimistic note, with Laura feeling hopeful that their luck will turn. In reality, continual debt and the hot, dry Dakota summers drove Laura and Almanzo from their land. They later settled in Mansfield, Missouri, founding a successful fruit and dairy farm where they lived comfortably until their respective deaths.
Wilder's first editor at Harper, Virginia Kirkus, had retired from her pre-publication book review service and long retired from writing all of its contents. Of the unfinished novel later marketed as volume 9, Kirkus Reviews wrote in part, "For a moment it's all wrong, this manuscript left unrevised by Mrs. Wilder, and then Manly (never 'Almanzo') takes hold, joking and reasoning and promising ... Compared to its predecessors this is telegraphic, with little dialogue or development of incident; one might also say less fictionalized. and consequently closer to the bone, to the hopes for a good harvest dashed year after year. ... The spirit as well as the format is that of the Little House [lower-alpha 1] (though the format will mislead those who expect a functional resemblance)." [2]
The Little House on the Prairie books comprise a series of American children's novels written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The stories are based on her childhood and adolescence in the American Midwest between 1870 and 1894. Eight of the novels were completed by Wilder, and published by Harper & Brothers in the 1930s and 1940s, during her lifetime. The name "Little House" appears in the first and third novels in the series, while the third is identically titled Little House on the Prairie. The second novel, meanwhile, was about her husband's childhood.
Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder was an American writer. The Little House on the Prairie series of children's books, published between 1932 and 1943, were based on her childhood in a settler and pioneer family.
Rose Wilder Lane was an American writer and daughter of American writer Laura Ingalls Wilder. Along with two other female writers, Ayn Rand and Isabel Paterson, Lane is one of the more influential advocates of the American libertarian movement.
Almanzo James Wilder was the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the father of Rose Wilder Lane, both noted authors.
Nellie Oleson is a fictional character in the Little House series of autobiographical children's novels written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was portrayed by Alison Arngrim in the NBC television show Little House on the Prairie, where her role is much expanded. Three different girls from Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood — Nellie Owens, Genevieve Masters and Stella Gilbert — were the basis for the fictional Nellie Oleson.
The Long Winter is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1940, the sixth of nine books in her Little House series. It is set in southeastern Dakota Territory during the severe winter of 1880–1881, when she turned 14 years old.
Little House in the Big Woods is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published by Harper in 1932. It was Wilder's first book published and it inaugurated her Little House series. It is based on memories of her early childhood in the Big Woods near Pepin, Wisconsin, in the early 1870s.
On the Banks of Plum Creek is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1937, the fourth of nine books in her Little House series. It is based on a few years of her childhood when the Ingalls family lived at Plum Creek near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, during the 1870s. The original dust jacket proclaimed, "The true story of an American pioneer family by the author of Little House in the Big Woods".
By the Shores of Silver Lake is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1939, the fifth of nine books in her Little House series. It spans just over one year, beginning when she is 12 years old and her family moves from Plum Creek, Minnesota to what will become De Smet, South Dakota.
Little Town on the Prairie is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1941, the seventh of nine books in her Little House series. It is set in De Smet, South Dakota. It opens in the spring after the Long Winter and ends as Laura becomes a school teacher so she can help her sister, Mary, stay at a school for the blind in Vinton, Iowa. It tells the story of 15-year-old Laura's first paid job outside of home and her last term of schooling. At the end of the novel, she receives a teacher's certificate and is employed to teach at the Brewster settlement, 12 miles (19 km) away.
These Happy Golden Years is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1943, the eighth of nine books in her Little House series – although it originally ended it. It is based on her later adolescence near De Smet, South Dakota, featuring her short time as a teacher, beginning at age 15, and her courtship with Almanzo Wilder. It spans the time period from 1882 to 1885, when they marry.
Farmer Boy is a children's historical novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1933. It was the second-published one in the Little House series but it is not related to the first, which that of the third directly continues. Thus the later Little House on the Prairie is sometimes called the second one in the series, or the second volume of "the Laura Years".
On the Way Home is the diary of an American farm wife, Laura Ingalls Wilder, during her 1894 migration with her husband Almanzo Wilder and their seven-year-old daughter, Rose, from De Smet, South Dakota, to Mansfield, Missouri, where they settled permanently.
West from Home is a collection of letters sent by the American journalist Laura Ingalls Wilder to her husband Almanzo Wilder in 1915, published by Harper & Row in 1974 with the subtitle Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915. It was edited by Roger MacBride, the literary executor of their daughter Rose Wilder Lane, and provided with a historical "setting by Margot Patterson Doss". Wilder had been sent to San Francisco to write about the 1915 World's Fair and she visited Rose, who lived in that city, when she was 48 years old and Rose 28.
Little House on the Prairie is an autobiographical children's novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in 1935. It was the third novel published in the Little House series, continuing the story of the first, Little House in the Big Woods (1932), but not related to the second. Thus, it is sometimes called the second one in the series, or the second volume of "the Laura Years".
Let the Hurricane Roar, reissued as Young Pioneers starting from 1976, is a short novel by Rose Wilder Lane that incorporates elements of the childhood of her mother Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was published in The Saturday Evening Post as a serial in 1932 and by Longmans as a book early in 1933, not long after Little House in the Big Woods (1932), the first volume of her mother's Little House series.
Free Land is a novel by Rose Wilder Lane that features American homesteading during the 1880s in what is now South Dakota. It was published in The Saturday Evening Post as a serial during March and April 1938 and then published as a book by Longmans.
A Little House Traveler: Writings from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Journeys Across America is a collection of early writings by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House series of children's novels. It consists of three parts: On the Way Home, a diary originally published in 1962; West from Home, a collection of letters from Wilder to her husband Almanzo Wilder written in 1915 and published in 1974; and The Road Back, a previously unpublished diary.
Little House on the Prairie: The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder is a documentary film about the life of American author Laura Ingalls Wilder. She is best known for her Little House on the Prairie book series.