$242.96 plus shipping and handling
Which is how much I will spend getting caught up buying published juvenile biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder. That's quite a lot of money for books that will probably only serve no other purpose than to (1) make me mad, and (2) perpetuate a whole lot of myths.

Every blessed LIW biographer these days seems to bow to the holy trinity (Anderson, Miller, and Zochert) along with the lesser Little House gods (Romines and Holtz) as the gospel for all things Laura. Those who feel like they're doing real research (Pamela Smith Hill* and her adult bio comes to mind), also use the "Pioneer Girl" manuscript and letters from Herbert Hoover library.

While a primary source can reflect the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer of history, it doesn't necessarily mean that these sources are historically accurate.

Hmmm, how to go about annotating "Pioneer Girl" without copyright infringement?

*re: Pamela Smith Hill, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life (Pierre, South Dakota: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2007) --- I'd actually recommend that a person interested in LIW take a look at this one, especially if they haven't seen the HH letters. You get more meat from "Pioneer Girl" in Zochert, though (albeit without benefit of Hill's hundred or so "LIW, 'Pioneer Girl,' Folder X" footnotes to let you know that's what you're reading). Imho, it would have been nices if Hill hadn't relied on Hines for Ruralist articles and titles, and if she hadn't totally lost steam in the last fourth of the book.
- posted by pioneergirl at 3:42 PM