|
Rose Wilder Lane (December 5, 1886-October 30, 1968) was an American author and the daughter of author Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Rose Wilder Lane was born in De Smet, Dakota Territory, the first (and only surviving) child of Laura Elizabeth Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder. Despite inheriting the pioneering spirit of her forebearers, she was quickly drawn away from a rural lifestyle and traveled much of the world during her lifetime. She became a well-known newspaper reporter, political theorist, world traveler and novelist. Her career as a writer began around 1910 and extended through the Vietnam War, during which she served as a war correspondent. She married Claire Gillette Lane in 1909, and they had one child, a boy, who died shortly after birth around 1910. She and her husband divorced in 1918. She never remarried, although she informally "adopted" several young people throughout her life.
Despite being overshadowed by her mother's fame today, Lane's own accomplishments were remarkable. She began her career as a Western Union telegrapher at the age of seventeen, became one of the first female real estate agents in California and eventually began her writing career on the staff of the San Francisco Bulletin. She wrote early biographies of Henry Ford, Charlie Chaplin, Herbert Hoover and Jack London. During the 1920s and 1930s, her fictional short stories and novels were often recognized with O. Henry awards, she was frequently anthologized and she was regularly featured in publications such as Harper's, Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping and Ladies' Home Journal. Her work as a traveling war correspondent began with a stint with the Red Cross Publicity Bureau in post-WWI Europe and continued though 1965, when at the age of 78, she was reporting from Vietnam for Woman's Day Magazine, providing "a woman's point of view."
Controversy surrounds Lane's exact role in her mother's famous "Little House" series of books. Some argue that Wilder was an "untutored genius", relying on her daughter mainly for some early encouragement and her connections with publishers and literary agents. Others contend that Lane basically took her mother's unpolished rough drafts in hand and completely (and silently) transformed them into the series of books we know today. The truth most likely lies somewhere between these two positions -- Wilder's writing career as a rural journalist and credible essayist began more than two decades before the "Little House" series, and Lane's formidable skills as an editor and ghostwriter are well-documented. The existing evidence (including ongoing correspondence between the women concerning the development of series, Lane's extensive personal diaries and Wilder's draft manuscripts) tends to reveal an ongoing joint collaboration. The conclusion can be made that Wilder's strengths as a compelling storyteller and Lane's considerable skills in dramatic pacing, literary structure and characterication contributed to an occasionally tense, but remarkable collaboration between two talented women.
During the last 30 years of her life, Lane turned away from fiction writing and became one of the more influential American libertarians of the middle 20th century. A staunch opponent of communism, she was the author of The Discovery of Freedom, 1943, and tirelessly promoted and wrote about individual freedom, liberty and its impact on mankind. During the early 1960s, she contributed book reviews to the influential William Volker Fund. She was also the adoptive grandmother of Roger MacBride, the Libertarian Party's 1976 candidate for US President.
"The longest lives are short; our work lasts longer". (Rose Wilder Lane)
Bibliography of Rose Wilder Lane
"The Story of Art Smith" (1915) (biography)
"Henry Ford's Own Story" (1917) (biography)
"Diverging Roads" (1919) (fiction)
"White Shadows on the South Seas" (with Frederick O'Brien) (1919) (non-fiction travel)
"The Making of Herbert Hoover" (1920) (biography)
"The Peaks of Shala" (1923) (non-fiction travel)
"He Was A Man" (1925) (fiction)
"Hillbilly" (1925) (fiction)
"Cindy" (1928) (fiction)
"Let the Hurricane Roar" (1932) (fiction)
"Old Home Town" (1935) (fiction)
"Give Me Liberty" AKA "Credo" (1936) (political history)
"Free Land" (1938) (fiction)
"The Discovery of Freedom" (1943) (political history)
"What Is This: The Gestapo?" (1943) (pamphlet)
"On the Way Home" (1962) (biography/autobiography)
"The Woman's Day Book of American Needlework" (1963)
SEE ALSO: "The Ghost in the Little House, A Life of Rose Wilder Lane",(1993), by William V. Holtz, University Missouri Press
| 
