Wilder Women Writing An Investigation of Authorship Based on Selected Works of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane Kristina Runyeon-Odeberg Degree Project Main Field of Study: English Credits: 30 Semester/Year: Spring 2020 Supervisor: Rachel Allan Examiner: Terry Walker Course code/Registration Number: EN005A Degree Programme: English MA Contents 1. Introduction............................................................................................................................1 2. Background............................................................................................................................2 2.1 Laura Ingalls Wilder.........................................................................................................2 2.2 Rose Wilder Lane.............................................................................................................3 2.3 Corpus-Based Approaches to Determining Authorship...................................................4 2.3.1 Register Features.......................................................................................................4 2.3.2 Corpus Stylistics........................................................................................................5 2.3.3 Idiolect.......................................................................................................................6 2.4 Previous Research............................................................................................................7 2.4.1 Ingalls Wilder or Wilder Lane?..................................................................................7 2.4.2 Stylistic Exploration of Texts.....................................................................................8 2.4.3 N-grams in Authorship Studies..................................................................................9 3. Aim and Hypotheses............................................................................................................10 4. Material and Method............................................................................................................11 4.1 Material...........................................................................................................................11 4.1.1 Limitations...............................................................................................................13 4.2 Method............................................................................................................................13 4.2.1 Register Features: Verbs..........................................................................................13 4.2.2 Register Features: Nouns.........................................................................................14 4.2.3 Register Features: Pronouns....................................................................................15 4.2.4 Stylistic Features: Common Descriptive Adjectives...............................................15 4.2.5 Stylistic Features: Adjective-Adjective Constructions............................................16 4.2.6 Stylistic Features: Verb-Verb Constructions............................................................16 5. Data Analysis.......................................................................................................................17 5.1 Register Features............................................................................................................18 5.1.1 Verb Tense................................................................................................................18 5.1.2 Nouns.......................................................................................................................20 5.1.3 Pronouns..................................................................................................................21 5.2 Stylistic Features............................................................................................................23 5.2.1 Common Descriptive Adjectives.............................................................................23 5.2.2 Adjective-Adjective Constructions..........................................................................28 5.2.3 Verb-Verb Constructions .........................................................................................30 i 6. Summary and Discussion.....................................................................................................33 6.1 Register Features............................................................................................................33 6.2 Stylistic Features............................................................................................................34 7. Conclusion...........................................................................................................................36 References.................................................................................................................................38 Primary Sources....................................................................................................................38 Secondary Sources................................................................................................................38 ii 1. Introduction In May of 1930, Laura Ingalls Wilder brought the handwritten manuscript for her memoirs to her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. At the time, Ingalls Wilder had only published short columns for magazines; Wilder Lane, however, was an award-winning writer (Ingalls Wilder 2014, xix; Holtz 1995 [1993], 113). From these memoirs, eight books were published. These books would sell more than 60 million copies, be translated into 45 languages, and undergo a revival when they were televised in the 1970s and 1980s. The television show, called Little House on the Prairie, has been one of the most popular and long-running shows to date, and it was in syndication at least until 2016 (Fraser 2016, 5). The year 2020 marks the 85th anniversary of the publication of Little House on the Prairie (Smith Hill 2007, 161). Ingalls Wilder, who was the sole credited author of these books, would become one of the most popular authors of children’s books in the twentieth century (Miller 2016, 1). Today, Wilder Lane is primarily remembered for being one of the founding mothers of the Libertarian movement rather than award-winning writing. The Little House books, however, still receive attention and recognition from readers worldwide. Titles from the series are appearing on lists such as 100 Best American Authors (Goodreads 2020). The story of Laura Ingalls Wilder is a phenomenon that continues to draw interest from both fans and critics. Apart from fans and critics, scholars have taken interest in the Little House books, spanning from such subjects as the importance of horses (Blackford and Lockhart 2018) to gender studies (Romines 1997). For a long time, the story was simply that Ingalls Wilder had written her own memoirs. Soon after the death of Wilder Lane, scholars began to question the authorship of Ingalls Wilder’s books. One of the enigmas to capture the interest of scholars was how Ingalls Wilder seemed to be a full-fledged writer from the first of the Little House books, which was published when she was in her mid-sixties (Miller 2008, 23). Pioneer Girl, the original manuscript that formed the basis for the Little House books, has been described as much less endearing than the finished books, thus raising the question of co-editing (Miller 2008, 25). Others have raised the question of lackluster writing in The First Four Years, which was published in its manuscript version (Ingalls Wilder 1971, xiv; Moore 1975, 110). Given that the manuscripts received for publishing from Ingalls Wilder evidently required no editing (Moore 1975, 118), the difference in quality has puzzled the minds of many. The extent of Wilder Lane’s involvement with co-editing or even authoring has not yet been fully determined, so the question of authorship still remains. This thesis is concerned with finding evidence of the involvement of Wilder Lane in the Little House books. If any such evidence is found, corpus stylistics methods will be used to evaluate it. 1 2. Background Anyone who investigates authorship of the Little House books also needs to be familiar with who Ingalls Wilder and Wilder Lane were, and how they became writers. This biographical background information is presented first. Section 2.1 provides background on Ingalls Wilder and how she started writing; Wilder Lane’s introduction to the trade is covered in Section 2.2. The following two sections, 2.3 and 2.4, deal with approaches to authorship and previous research. 2.1 Laura Ingalls Wilder Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867 in Pepin, Wisconsin, as the second child of Caroline and Charles Ingalls (Fraser 2016, 31); she died in Mansfield, Missouri in 1957 (Fraser 2016, 476). She was a pioneer, a schoolteacher, an expert hen farmer, a writer, and a businesswoman. While Ingalls Wilder did not graduate from high school (Smith Hill 2007, 58), she was nevertheless a good scholar, because she earned her first teacher’s certificate before her sixteenth birthday. She then taught in three schools between 1882 and 1885 before marrying Almanzo Wilder (Smith Hill 2007, 59). The oldest child and the only one to survive past infancy was Rose. The writing career of Ingalls Wilder started later in life, when she shared her expertise on raising hens in Mansfield,