Over lunch in early May, I was talking to Dedra Birzer, the director of the South Dakota Historical Society Press, about the article I had just completed on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The First Four Years. Dedra mentioned a prevalent idea that the book had been edited by Roger MacBride, Wilder’s literary heir. After Rose Wilder Lane’s death in October 1968, MacBride had found Wilder’s handwritten manuscript “The First Three Years” in Lane’s papers. He had it typed and submitted it to Harper & Row in the spring of 1969. Biographers and literary critics often assume that any substantive editorial changes were made by MacBride during this process, before the manuscript was submitted for publication. “As it happens,” I said to Dedra, “that’s a mistaken assumption. In fact, MacBride submitted an almost completely unedited manuscript to the editors at Harper & Row.”¹ But the conversation got me thinking about how this assumption, which continues to appear in recent works on Wilder, came to be.

I concluded that the error arises when scholars compare Wilder’s handwritten original, housed at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, with the published book. There are numerous differences between the two, and because Harper indicated that they had published the novel as Wilder had left it, it seems reasonable to assume that these changes were made by MacBride when he had the manuscript typed. However, another document in the Hoover Library belies that idea: MacBride’s typescript, which was edited by Harper & Row.² Within the HarperCollins archives in New York City, letters and memos exchanged by the editorial team outline and direct the changes made in this typescript.³

As seen in this page from the typescript of The First Four Years, the Harper editors cut Wilder’s description of Laura’s painful second childbirth, including her needing stitches and getting bedsores. Courtesy Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum

The document shows many hands at work, for Harper & Row assigned both copyeditors and fact checkers to the book. As a result, the manuscript can be confusing, and parts of it were retyped so that the editors could insert material to keep the book consistent with These Happy Golden Years. But it clearly shows that MacBride did little if any editing of the manuscript prior to submission. For example, the difficult birth of Laura’s son, followed by stitches and bedrest, is often cited as something that MacBride omitted, but this typescript shows that the Harper & Row editorial team eliminated the passage with a bold X through the material.

For more about the origin and editing of Wilder’s final novel, see my article “‘A Story in the Rough’: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The First Four Years,” which will soon appear in the Fall 2025 issue of South Dakota History.

―Nancy Tystad Koupal

1. Like all her handwritten manuscripts, “The First Three Years” contains Wilder’s asides to Lane. MacBride instructed the typist not to copy these messages to her editor, which included the poem at the end of the final “First Three Years” tablet. The poem comes after the song that Manly is singing as Laura watches him come from the barn. It appears several lines below the end of the manuscript and is circled as a separate thought. It seems to be the author’s wry commentary on her character’s (and ultimately her own) final decision to stick to farming and was not intended for publication. Based loosely on Edward R. Sill’s poem “The Fool’s Prayer,” it reads: “‘But for our blunders, Lord in shame/Before the face of heaven we fall./―oh Lord be merciful to me a fool.’” Wilder had also inserted her typed poem, “The Dakota Prairies,” at the end of this final tablet, which MacBride likewise did not include (Wilder, “The First Three Years,” pp. 160–61, file 251, Box 16, Rose Wilder Lane Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa).
2. Typescript of “The First Four Years,” files 252̵̵̵̵–53, ibid.
3. Koupal, “‘A Story in the Rough’: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The First Four Years,” South Dakota History 55, no. 3 (Fall 2025).