Rose Wilder Lane (December 5, 1886 – October 30, 1968) was an American
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
, travel writer,
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...
,
political theorist
A political theorist is someone who engages in constructing or evaluating political theory, including political philosophy. Theorists may be Academia, academics or independent scholars. Here the most notable political theorists are categorized b ...
and daughter of American writer
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957) was an American writer, mostly known for the '' Little House on the Prairie'' series of children's books, published between 1932 and 1943, which were based on her childhood ...
. Along with two other female writers,
Ayn Rand and
Isabel Paterson, Lane is noted as one of the most influential advocates of the
American libertarian movement
In the United States, libertarianism is a political philosophy promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as ''conservative'' on economic iss ...
.
Early life
Lane was the first child of
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957) was an American writer, mostly known for the '' Little House on the Prairie'' series of children's books, published between 1932 and 1943, which were based on her childhood ...
and
Almanzo Wilder
Almanzo James Wilder (; February 13, 1857 – October 23, 1949) was the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the father of Rose Wilder Lane, both noted authors.
Biography Early life
Almanzo James Wilder was born on February 13, 1857 a ...
and the only child of her parents to survive into adulthood. Her early years were a difficult time for her parents because of successive crop failures, illnesses and chronic economic hardships. During her childhood, the family moved several times, living with relatives in
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
and then
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
and briefly returning to
De Smet, South Dakota
De Smet is a city in and the county seat of Kingsbury County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 1,089 at the 2010 census.
History
Located in the area of South Dakota known as "East River" (east of the Missouri River, which diagona ...
before settling in
Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894. There, her parents would eventually establish a dairy farm and fruit orchards. She attended secondary school in Mansfield and
Crowley, Louisiana
Crowley (Local pronunciation: ) is a city in, and the parish seat of, Acadia Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. At the 2020 United States census, Crowley had a population of 11,710. Crowley is the principal city of the Crowley micropolitan ...
while living with her aunt Eliza Jane Wilder, graduating in 1904 in a class of seven.
Her intellect and ambition were demonstrated by her ability to compress three years of
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
into one and by graduating at the top of her high school class in Crowley. Despite her academic success, she was unable to attend college as a result of her parents' financial situation.
[Rose Wilder Lane, "Woman's Place Is in the Home," '']Ladies Home Journal
''Ladies' Home Journal'' was an American magazine last published by the Meredith Corporation. It was first published on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States. In ...
'' (Oct. 1936)
Early career, marriage and divorce
After high school graduation, Lane returned to her parents' home in Mansfield and learned
telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...
at the Mansfield railroad station. Not satisfied with the options open to young women in Mansfield, by early 1905 she was working for
Western Union
The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company cha ...
in
Sedalia, Missouri
Sedalia is a city located approximately south of the Missouri River and, as the county seat of Pettis County, Missouri, United States, it is the principal city of the Sedalia Micropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the city had ...
. By 1906, Lane was working as a telegrapher at the Midland Hotel in
Kansas City. Over the next five years, Lane worked as a telegrapher in Missouri, Indiana and California.
In 1908, Lane moved to
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
, where she worked as a telegrapher at the
Fairmont Hotel. In March 1909, Lane married salesman, promoter and occasional newspaperman Claire Gillette Lane. Evidence exists that suggests the Lanes had met back in Kansas City and Lane's diary hints that she moved to San Francisco to join her future husband. Shortly after they wed, Lane quit her job with Western Union and the couple embarked on travels across the United States to promote various schemes. Lane soon became pregnant. While staying in Salt Lake City the following November, Lane gave birth to a premature, stillborn son, according to public records. Subsequent surgery in Kansas City likely left her unable to bear children. The topic is mentioned only briefly in a handful of existing letters written by Lane years after the infant's death in order to express sympathy and understanding to close friends who were also dealing with the loss of a child.
For the next few years, the Lanes continued to live a nomadic lifestyle, including stays in Missouri, Ohio, New York and Maine to work together and separately on various promotional and advertising projects. While letters to her parents described a happy-go-lucky existence, Lane's subsequent diary entries and numerous autobiographical magazine articles later described her mindset at this time as depressed and disillusioned with her marriage. She felt her intellectual interests did not mesh with the life she was living with her husband. One account even had her attempting suicide by drugging herself with chloroform only to awake with a headache and a renewed sense of purpose in life.
[Rose Wilder Lane, "I, Rose Wilder Lane, Am the Only Truly Happy Person I Know, and I Discovered the Secret of Happiness on the Day I Tried to Kill Myself," Cosmopolitan, 80 (June 1926)]
During these years, Lane, keenly aware of her lack of a formal education, read voraciously and taught herself several languages. Her writing career began around 1908, with occasional freelance newspaper jobs that earned much-needed extra cash. In 1913 and 1914, the Lanes sold farm land in what is now the
San Jose/
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...
area of Northern California. Conditions often required them to work separately to earn greater commissions and of the two Lane turned out to be the better salesperson. The marriage foundered as there were several periods of separation and eventually an amicable divorce. Lane's diaries reveal subsequent romantic involvements with several men in the years following her divorce, but she never remarried and eventually chose to remain single and free of romantic attachments.
The threat of America's entry into
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
had seriously weakened the real estate market, so in early 1915 Lane accepted a friend's offer of a stopgap job as an editorial assistant on the staff of the ''
San Francisco Bulletin
The ''San Francisco Evening Bulletin'' was a newspaper in San Francisco, founded as the ''Daily Evening Bulletin'' in 1855 by James King of William. King used the newspaper to crusade against political corruption, and built it into having the highe ...
''. The stopgap turned into a watershed. She immediately caught the attention of her editors not only through her talents as a writer in her own right, but also as a highly skilled editor for other writers. Before long, her photo and byline were running in the ''Bulletin'' daily, churning out formulaic romantic fiction serials that would run for weeks at a time. Lane's first-hand accounts of the lives of
Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that ...
,
Charlie Chaplin,
Jack London
John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...
and
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
were published in book form.
Later in 1915, Lane's mother visited San Francisco for several months. Together they attended the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Details of this visit and Wilder's daily life in 1915 are preserved in Wilder's letters to her husband in ''
West from Home'', published in 1974. Although Lane's diaries indicate she was separated from her husband in 1915, her mother's letters do not indicate this. Lane and her husband are recorded as living together with him unemployed and looking for work during her mother's two-month visit. It seems the separation was either covered up, or had not yet involved separate households.
Freelance writing career
By 1918, Lane's marriage officially ended and she had quit her job with the ''San Francisco Bulletin'' following the resignation of managing editor,
Fremont Older. It was at this point that Lane launched her career as a freelance writer. From this period through the early 1940s, her work regularly appeared in leading publications such as ''Harper's'', ''Saturday Evening Post'', ''Sunset'', ''Good Housekeeping'' and ''Ladies' Home Journal''. Several of her short stories were nominated for
O. Henry Prizes and a few novels became top sellers.
Lane became the first biographer of
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
, writing ''The Making of Herbert Hoover'' in 1920 in collaboration with Charles K. Field, editor of ''Sunset'' magazine. The book was published well before Hoover became president in 1929. A friend and defender of Hoover's for the remainder of her life, many of her personal papers would later be included in the Rose Wilder-Lane Collection at the Herbert Hoover Library in
West Branch, Iowa
West Branch is a city in Cedar County, Iowa, Cedar and Johnson County, Iowa, Johnson counties in the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 2,509 as of the 2020 United States Census, 2020, census. It is the birthplace of the only American presiden ...
. While Lane's papers contain little actual correspondence between them, the Hoover Post-Presidential Individual series contains a file of Rose's correspondence that spans from 1936–1963.
In the late 1920s, Lane was reputed to be one of the highest-paid female writers in America and along with Hoover counted among her friends well known figures such as
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was ...
,
Isabel Paterson,
Dorothy Thompson,
John Patric
John Patric (May 22, 1902 – August 31, 1985) was an American writer. He was a contributing writer for '' National Geographic'' during the mid to late 1930s and early 1940s and was the author of two books. His 1943 book, ''Yankee Hobo in the Or ...
and
Lowell Thomas. Despite this success, her compulsive generosity with her family and friends often found her strapped for cash and forced to work on material that paid well, but thus did not engage her growing interests in political theory and world history. She suffered from periodic bouts of self-doubt and
depression in mid-life, diagnosing herself as having
bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
. During these times of depression, Lane was unable to move ahead with her own writing, but she would easily find work as a ghostwriter or silent editor for other well-known writers. In 1928, Lane returned to the United States to live on her parents' farm. Confident in her sales of her books and short stories as well as her growing stock market investments, she spent freely, building a new home for her parents on the property and modernizing the farmhouse for herself and a steady stream of visiting literary friends.
Lane's occasional work as a traveling war correspondent began with a stint with the
American Red Cross Publicity Bureau in post-World War I Europe. She would continue with the Red Cross through 1965, reporting from
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
at the age of 78 for ''Woman's Day'' magazine to provide "a woman's point of view". She traveled extensively in Europe and Asia as part of the Red Cross. In 1926, Lane,
Helen Dore Boylston and their French maid traveled from
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
to
Albania
Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...
in a car they had named Zenobia. An account of the journey called ''Travels With Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford'' was published in 1983. Lane became enamored with Albania and lived there for several long periods during the 1920s, spaced between sojourns to Paris and her parents'
Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri. She informally adopted a young Albanian boy named Rexh Meta (), who she claimed saved her life on a dangerous mountain trek. She later sponsored his education at
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...
. He served in the Albanian government and was imprisoned for over thirty years by both the Italian fascists and the Albanian communists, dying in
Tirana
Tirana ( , ; aln, Tirona) is the capital and largest city of Albania. It is located in the centre of the country, enclosed by mountains and hills with Dajti rising to the east and a slight valley to the northwest overlooking the Adriatic Sea ...
in 1985.
Literary collaboration
Lane's role in her mother's ''Little House'' book series has remained unclear. Her parents had invested with her broker upon her advice and when the market crashed the Wilders found themselves with difficult times. Lane came to the farm at 46 years old, divorced and childless, with minimal finances to keep her afloat.
In late 1930, Lane's mother approached her with a rough, first-person narrative manuscript outlining her hardscrabble pioneer childhood, ''Pioneer Girl''. Lane took notice and started using her connections in the publishing world. Despite Lane's efforts to market ''Pioneer Girl'' through her publishing connections, the manuscript was rejected time and again. One editor recommended crafting a novel for children out of the beginning. Wilder and Lane worked on the idea and the result was ''Little House in the Big Woods''. Accepted for publishing by Harper and Brothers in late 1931, then hitting the shelves in 1932, the book's success resulted in the decision to continue the series, following young Laura into young adulthood. ''The First Four Years'' was discovered as a manuscript after Lane's death in 1968. Wilder had written the manuscript about the first four years of her marriage and the struggles of the frontier, but she never had intended for it to be published. However, in 1971 it became the ninth volume in the ''Little House'' series.
Successful novels
The collaboration between the two is believed by literary historians to have benefited Lane's career as much as her mother's. Lane's most popular short stories and her two most commercially successful novels were written at this time and were fueled by material which was taken directly from Wilder's recollections of Ingalls-Wilder family folklore. ''Let the Hurricane Roar'' (later titled ''Young Pioneers'') and ''Free Land'' both addressed the difficulties of homesteading in the Dakotas in the late 19th century and how the so-called "free land" in fact cost homesteaders their life savings. ''
The Saturday Evening Post
''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely ...
'' paid Lane top fees to serialize both novels, which were later adapted for popular radio performances. Both books represented Lane's creative and literary peak. The ''Saturday Evening Post'' paid her $30,000 in 1938 to serialize her best-selling novel ''Free Land'' ($ by today's standards). ''Let the Hurricane Roar'' saw an increasing and steady sale, augmented by its adaptation into popular radio dramatization that starred
Helen Hayes.
In 1938, with the proceeds of ''Free Land'' in hand, Lane was able to pay all of her accumulated debts. She relocated to
Danbury
Danbury is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, located approximately northeast of New York City. Danbury's population as of 2022 was 87,642. It is the seventh largest city in Connecticut.
Danbury is nicknamed the "Hat City ...
,
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...
and purchased a rural home there with three wooded acres, on which she lived for the rest of her life. At this same time, the growing royalties from the ''Little House'' books were providing Lane's parents with an assured and sufficient income. Lane bought her parents an automobile and financed construction of the Rock House near the Wilder homestead. Her parents resided in the Rock House during much of the 1930s.
Return to journalism and societal views
During World War II, Lane enjoyed a new phase in her writing career. From 1942 to 1945, she wrote a weekly column for ''
The Pittsburgh Courier
The ''Pittsburgh Courier'' was an African-American weekly newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1907 until October 22, 1966. By the 1930s, the ''Courier'' was one of the leading black newspapers in the United States.
It was acqu ...
'', at the time the most widely read African-American newspaper.
Rather than hiding or trimming her
laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups ...
views, Lane seized the chance to sell them to the readership. She sought out topics of special interest to her audience. Her first entry characterized the
Double V campaign
The Double V campaign was a slogan and drive to promote the fight for democracy in overseas campaigns and at the home front in the United States for African Americans during World War II. The Double V refers to the " V for victory" sign promine ...
as part of the more general fight for individual liberty in the United States, writing: "Here, at last, is a place where I belong. Here are the Americans who know the value of equality and freedom". Her columns highlighted success stories of blacks to illustrate broader themes about entrepreneurship, freedom and creativity. In one, she compared the accomplishments of
Robert Lee Vann and
Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that ...
. Vann's rags to riches story illustrated the benefits in a "capitalist society in which a penniless orphan, one of a despised minority can create ''The Pittsburgh Courier'' and publicly, vigorously, safely, attack a majority opinion" while Ford's showed how a poor mechanic can create "hundreds of jobs,
..putting even beggars into cars".
[Beito, David T. and Linda Royster Beito]
"Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder-Lane, and Zora Neale Hurston on War, Race, the State, and Liberty."
''Independent Review
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...
'', 12. Spring 2008).
Lane combined advocacy of laissez faire and anti-racism. The views she expressed on race were similar to those of
Zora Neale Hurston, a fellow individualist and writer who was black. Her columns emphasized the arbitrariness of racial categories and stressed the centrality of the individual. Instead of indulging in what she referred to as the "ridiculous, idiotic and tragic fallacy of race,
ywhich a minority of the earth's population has deluded itself during the past century", Lane believed it was time for all Americans. black and white, to "renounce their race". Judging by skin color was comparable to the communists who assigned guilt or virtue on the basis of class. In Lane's view, the fallacies of race and class hearkened to the "old English-feudal 'class' distinction". She further believed that the collectivists, including those who embraced President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
's
New Deal, were to blame for filling "young minds with fantasies of 'races' and 'classes' and 'the masses,' all controlled by pagan gods, named Economic Determinism or Society or Government".
[Beito, David T. and Linda Royster Beito]
"Selling Laissez-faire Anti-Racism to the Black Masses" Rose Wilder-Lane and the Pittsburgh Courier."
''Independent Review
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...
'', 15. Fall 2010).
Along with Hurston and Paterson, Lane was critical of Roosevelt on his foreign policy and was against drafting young men into a foreign war.
''The Discovery of Freedom''
For a few months in 1940, Lane's growing zeal for
libertarianism united her with the well-known vagabond free-lance writer
John Patric
John Patric (May 22, 1902 – August 31, 1985) was an American writer. He was a contributing writer for '' National Geographic'' during the mid to late 1930s and early 1940s and was the author of two books. His 1943 book, ''Yankee Hobo in the Or ...
, a like-minded political thinker whose advocacy of libertarian themes culminated in his 1943 work ''
Yankee Hobo in the Orient''. They spent several months traveling across the country in Patric's automobile to observe the effects of the
Great Depression on the nation and to exchange ideas. The trip culminated in a two-month stay in
Bellingham, Washington
Bellingham ( ) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies south of the U.S.–Canada border in between two major cities of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, British Columbia (loc ...
.
In the early 1940s, despite continuing requests from editors for both fiction and non-fiction material, Lane turned away from commercial fiction writing, save for her collaboration on her mother's books. At this time, she became known among libertarians as influential in the movement. She vehemently opposed the
New Deal, eschewed "creeping
socialism
Socialism is a left-wing Economic ideology, economic philosophy and Political movement, movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to Private prop ...
",
Social Security
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...
, wartime rationing, and all forms of taxation. Lane ceased writing highly paid commercial fiction to protest paying
income tax
An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Tax ...
es. Living on a small salary from her newspaper column and no longer needing to support her parents or adopted sons, she cut expenses to the bare minimum, living a modern-day version of her ancestors' pioneer life on her rural land near Danbury. She gained some media attention for her refusal to accept a ration card, instead working cooperatively with her rural neighbors to grow and preserve fruits and vegetables and to raise chickens and pigs for meat. Literary critic and political writer
Isabel Paterson had urged Lane to move to
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...
, where she would be only "up country a few miles" from Paterson, who had been a friend for many years.
After experiencing it first hand in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
during her travels with the Red Cross, Lane was a staunch opponent of
communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a ...
. As a result, Lane's initial writings on individualism and conservative government began while she was still writing popular fiction in the 1930s, culminating with ''
The Discovery of Freedom'' (1943). After this point, Lane promoted and wrote about individual freedom and its impact on humanity. The same year also saw the publication of Paterson's ''
The God of the Machine'' and
Ayn Rand's novel ''
The Fountainhead
''The Fountainhead'' is a 1943 novel by Russian-American author Ayn Rand, her first major literary success. The novel's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an intransigent young architect, who battles against conventional standards and refuses to comp ...
''. Because of these writings, the three women have been referred to as the founding mothers of the American
libertarian movement.
Writer
Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock (October 13, 1870 – August 19, 1945) was an American libertarian author, editor first of ''The Freeman'' and then ''The Nation'', educational theorist, Georgist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century. He was an ...
wrote that Lane and Paterson's nonfiction works were "the only intelligible books on the philosophy of individualism that have been written in America this century". The two women had "shown the male world of this period how to think fundamentally.
.. ey don't fumble and fiddle around – every shot goes straight to the centre". Journalist
John Chamberlain credits Rand, Paterson and Lane with his final "conversion" from socialism to what he called "an older American philosophy" of libertarian and conservative ideas.
In 1943, Lane came into the national spotlight through her response to a radio poll on Social Security. She mailed in a post-card with a response likening the Social Security system to a
Ponzi scheme that would, she felt, ultimately destroy the United States. Wartime monitoring of mail eventually resulted in a Connecticut State Trooper being dispatched to her home to question her motives. Her strong response to this infringement on her right of free speech resulted in a flurry of newspaper articles and the publishing of a pamphlet, "What is this, the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
?", that was meant to remind Americans to be watchful of their rights despite the wartime exigencies. The pamphlet was distributed by the National Economic Council, Inc, an anti-Semitic organization that supported the fascist government in Spain. During this time period, an
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
file was compiled on Lane.
As Lane aged, her political opinions solidified as a stalwart libertarian. Her defense of what she considered to be basic American principles of liberty and freedom were seen by some as harsh and abrasive in the face of disagreement. It is documented that during this time period that she broke with her old friend and political ally Isabel Paterson in 1946. During this time period and into the 1950s, Lane also had an acrimonious correspondence with socialist writer
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radical ...
.
Later years and death
Lane played a hands-on role during the 1940s and 1950s in launching the
libertarian movement and began an extensive correspondence with figures such as
DuPont executive Jasper Crane and writer
Frank Meyer as well as her friend and colleague
Ayn Rand. She wrote book reviews for the
National Economic Council and later for the
Volker Fund, out of which grew the
Institute for Humane Studies
The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) is a non-profit organization that promotes the teaching and research of classical liberalism in higher education in the United States. IHS offers funding opportunities, programs, and events for faculty and g ...
. Later, she lectured at and gave generous financial support to the Freedom School headed by libertarian
Robert LeFevre
Robert LeFevre (October 13, 1911 – May 13, 1986) was an American libertarian businessman, radio personality, and primary theorist of autarchism.
Early life
LeFevre was born in Gooding, Idaho, on October 13, 1911, but when he was a child ...
.
With her mother's death in 1957, ownership of the Rocky Ridge Farm house reverted to the farmer who had earlier bought the property on a life lease, allowing her to remain in residence. The local population put together a non-profit corporation to purchase the house and its grounds for use as a museum. After some wariness at the notion of seeing the house rather than the books themselves be a shrine to Lane's mother, she came to believe that making it into a museum would draw long-lasting attention to the books and sustain the theme of
individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...
she and her mother wove into the series. She donated the money needed to purchase the house and make it a museum, agreed to make significant contributions each year for its upkeep and also gave many of the family's belongings to the group.
[Holtz, William, ]
The Ghost in the Little House
', University of Missouri Press, 1995, p. 340, retrieved 12 January 2009 Lane's lifetime inheritance of Wilder's growing ''Little House'' royalties enabled her to again travel extensively and thoroughly renovated and remodeled her Connecticut home. Also during the 1960s, she revived her own commercial writing career by publishing several popular magazine series, including one about her tour of the Vietnam War zone in late 1965.
In later years, Lane wrote a book detailing the history of American needlework for ''Woman's Day''. She edited and published ''On the Way Home'', providing an autobiographical setting around her mother's original 1894 diary of their six-week journey from South Dakota to Missouri. Intended to serve as the capstone to the ''Little House'' series, the book was the result of Wilder's fans who were writing to Lane asking "what happened next?". She contributed book reviews to the
William Volker Fund and continued to work on revisions of ''The Discovery of Freedom'', which she never completed.
Lane was the adoptive grandmother and mentor to
Roger Lea MacBride, later the
Libertarian Party
Active parties by country
Defunct parties by country
Organizations associated with Libertarian parties
See also
* Liberal parties by country
* List of libertarian organizations
* Lists of political parties
Lists of political part ...
's 1976 candidate for president. The son of one of her editors with whom she formed a close bond when he was a boy, Lane later stated she was grooming him to be a future Libertarian thought leader. In addition to being her close friend, MacBride became her attorney and business manager and ultimately the heir to the Little House series and the multimillion-dollar franchise that he built around it after her death.
The last of the protégés to be taken under Lane's wing was the sister of her Vietnamese interpreter. Impressed by the young girl's intelligence, Lane helped to bring her to the United States and sponsored her enrollment in college.
Lane died in her sleep at age 81 on October 30, 1968 just as she was about to depart on a three-year world tour. She was buried next to her parents at Mansfield Cemetery in Mansfield, Missouri.
In the media
Lane was portrayed in the television adaptations of ''Little House on the Prairie'' by:
* Jennifer and Michele Steffin
* Terra Allen (part 1) and
Skye McCole Bartusiak
Skye McCole Bartusiak (September 28, 1992 – July 19, 2014) was an American child actress and child model. She appeared in '' The Patriot'' (2000), ''Don't Say a Word'' (2001), as Rose Wilder in '' Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura In ...
, Christina Stojanovich (part 2), in the
miniseries ''
Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder''.
There are eight novels written by MacBride, telling of her childhood and early youth. Despite assertions of the accuracy of the locations, dates and people mentioned, there is heavy debate on the degree of authenticity. At least some events may be accurately represented as he was a close friend of hers.
In the novel ''Pioneer Girl'' by Bich Minh Nguyen, a young Vietnamese-American Lee Lien researches Lane's life based on an old family story. Lee's grandfather claims that Lane became friendly with the family while visiting Vietnam in 1965 and gifted them with a gold brooch, suspected to be the one Almanzo gave to Lane's mother as described in ''These Happy Golden Years.''
[Nguyen, Bich Minh. (2014). ''Pioneer Girl.'' New York: Viking. , ]
In the novel ''A Wilder Rose'' by Susan Wittig Albert, Lane tells the story of her work on the ''Little House'' books and her years at the Wilder farm (1928–1935) to Norma Lee Browning, a young friend. The novel is based on Lane's diaries and journals of the period and letters exchanged with her mother.
In the alternate history novel ''
The Probability Broach
''The Probability Broach'' is a 1979 science fiction novel by American writer L. Neil Smith.
It is set in an alternate history, the so-called " Gallatin Universe", where a libertarian society has formed on the North American continent, styled ...
'' by
L. Neil Smith in which the United States becomes a
libertarian state in 1794 after a successful
Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection) was a violent tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax impo ...
and the overthrowing and execution of
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...
by firing squad for treason, Lane served as the 21st President of the
North American Confederacy from 1940 to 1952.
Bibliography
* ''The Story of Art Smith'' (1915, biography)
* ''Charlie Chaplin's Own Story'' (1916, biography)
* ''Henry Ford's Own Story'' (1917, biography)
* ''Diverging Roads'' (1919, fiction)
* ''White Shadows on the South Seas'' (assisted
Frederick O'Brien
Frederick O'Brien (16 June 1869 – 9 January 1932) was an American author, journalist, hobo, peripatetic world traveler, and public administrator. He wrote three best-selling travel books about French Polynesia between 1919 and 1922: ''White Sh ...
, 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)
* ''Hill-Billy'' (1925, fiction)
* ''Gordon Blake'' (1925, British edition of ''He Was a Man'', fiction)
* ''Cindy; a romance of the Ozarks'' (1928, fiction)
* ''Let the Hurricane Roar'' (1932, fiction), better known as ''
Young Pioneers''
* ''Old Home Town'' (1935, fiction)
*
Give Me Liberty' (1936)
*
' (1936) shorter version of ''Give Me Liberty'' published in ''Saturday Evening Post''
* ''
Free Land'' (1938, fiction)
*
The Discovery of Freedom' (1943, political history) adapted in 1947 as ''
The Mainspring of Human Progress''
* "What Is This: The Gestapo?" (1943, pamphlet)
* "On the Way Home" (1962)
* ''The Woman's Day Book of American Needlework'' (1963)
* ''Travels With Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford'' (1983, with Helen Dore Boylston), ed. William Holtz
* ''The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder-Lane, Literary Journalist'' (2007, ed. Amy Mattson Lauters)
References
Further reading
* Beito, David T. Beito and Beito, Linda Royster (Spring 2008)
"Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder-Lane, and Zora Neale Hurston on War, Race, the State, and Liberty"''Independent Review''. pp. 553–573. v. XII, n. 4.
* Holtz, William V. (1995)
University of Missouri Press.
* ———, ed. (1991)
University of Missouri Press
* Lauters, Amy Mattson (2007)
University of Missouri Press.
* Miller, John E. (1998). ''Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder''. University of Missouri Press. Contains extensive material on Rose and Wilder's literary collaboration, including facsimiles of their correspondence.
*
External links
*
*
*
*
Rose Wilder-Lane (1886–1968) from the
Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Ind ...
Rose Wilder-Lane: Pioneer of Liberty by Amy Lauters, from Legacy.com
*
Western American Literature Research: Rose Wilder LaneLaura Ingalls Wilder & Rose Wilder Lane: The Beginning of a Fruitful, Fateful Collaboration (Caroline Fraser, 17 April 2018)Where the World is Topsy-Turvy: Rose Wilder Lane After the Great War (Sallie Ketcham, 12 November 2018)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilder-Lane, Rose
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da:Laura Ingalls Wilder#Datteren Rose Wilder Lane