Archive for the 'Little House' Category
September 14, 2007 @ 7:34 am | Filed under: Little House,Poetry
One of the books I read during my research for the Martha Books was Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland in A.D. 1803. The time period was just about right; Little House in the Highlands is set in 1795, and change came slowly to those remote glens.
Dorothy traveled with her brother, William, and their friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (Ooh! Now there’s an idea for a novel!) In her journal she wrote,
"It was harvest-time, and the fields were quietly (might I be allowed to say pensively?) enlivened by small companies of reapers. It is not uncommon in the more lonely parts of the Highlands to see a single person so employed. The following poem was suggested to Wm. by a beautiful sentence in Thomas Wilkinson’s Tour in Scotland."
And then she copied out William’s poem (written two years later), "The Solitary Reaper."
A note in my Wm. Wordsworth collection tells me that the line from Thomas Wilkinson is this:
"Passed a female who was reaping alone; she sung in Erse, as she bended over her sickle; the sweetest human voice I ever heard: her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious, long after they were heard no more."
I love to know the story behind a poem, a novel, a painting. Here is William’s poem, all the lovelier to me for knowing what sparked it in his mind.
The Solitary Reaper
by William Wordsworth
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so shrilling ne’er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o’er the sickle bending;—
I listen’d, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
This week’s Poetry Friday round-up can be found at Hip Writer Mama.
What’s Poetry Friday? Susan Thomsen explains at PoetryFoundation.org.
July 2, 2007 @ 7:32 am | Filed under: Little House
UPDATED! A reader reports that the Loftus Store shipped her one of the old (unabridged) books, and one of the new (abridged). If you order from these sources and you want the unabridged editions, be sure to request the versions with the illustrated (painted) covers. The photo covers are the abridged editions.
Alicia, aka Love2Learn Mom, has just returned from a trip to South Dakota. One stop on her route was De Smet, the town Charles and Caroline Ingalls settled in during By the Shores of Silver Lake. Alicia writes that she found
two gift shops that still had quite a few copies of the [unabridged] Little House
prequels available for sale (and were willing to ship telephone orders).Here’s the info in case you’d like to pass it along…
The Loftus Store
www.loftusstore.com
1-866-335-3271Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society
1-800-880-3383
This one had at least five copies of most of the books
They have Caroline books as well as my Martha and Charlotte novels.
June 16, 2007 @ 9:53 am | Filed under: Little House
Karen E. noticed that a1books.com has a selection of the original, unabridged editions of some of my Martha and Charlotte books for reasonable prices, if you’re still looking.
The abridged versions are in the bookstores now, and please note that although the covers say "by Melissa Wiley," I declined to have any involvement in the cutting down. I have not read them. I did notice that one of my fairy tales in Highlands was pulled out and reprinted in the back of the book, under a heading about how "Martha loved when her mother told her stories." Eek.
June 5, 2007 @ 2:10 pm | Filed under: Little House
The wonderful Keller family runs a used-and-new online bookstore, and they kindly hosted my booksigning at the Virginia Home Education Association conference a few years back. They had me sign some extra books for their inventory, and they still have a few of these in stock if you’re looking for the unabridged editions of my Little House novels.
March 8, 2007 @ 1:39 pm | Filed under: Little House
The always delightful Nancy of FUN Books—one of my favorite homeschooling resource suppliers—has let me know that she has copies of all my unabridged Martha and Charlotte books in stock, except for The Road from Roxbury. That’s FUN as in Family Unschooling Network, and if you haven’t explored their collection of fun educational materials, you are in for a treat.
("What do you mean, unabridged?" Explanation here and here.)
February 11, 2007 @ 8:15 am | Filed under: Little House
Is it true they are getting rid of the Garth Williams illustrations in Laura’s books?
Only in the new paperback editions with the photographic covers. The Garth Williams art will still appear in the hardcover editions of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books, as well as the colorized paperback editions.
Are Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books being abridged?
No, only the Martha, Charlotte, Caroline, and Rose books are being abridged.
I want to buy the original, unabridged editions of your Martha and Charlotte books. How can I be sure that’s what I’m getting?
The new, abridged editions will have photo covers. The unabridged editions have the painted covers that appear in my sidebar.
Can you give me a list of all your books in order?
The Martha books are:
Little House in the Highlands
The Far Side of the Loch
Down to the Bonny Glen
Beyond the Heather Hills
The Charlotte books are:
Little House by Boston Bay
On Tide Mill Lane
The Road from Roxbury
Across the Puddingstone Dam
Oh no! Is The Road from Roxbury (unabridged) already out of print? I can’t find it at Amazon.
Try smaller booksellers such as those affiliated with the various Little House museum sites around the country.
And thank you so very much for your interest!
Related posts:
Little House news
More about my decision
January 26, 2007 @ 4:47 pm | Filed under: Little House,Poetry
This lovely old Scots ballad made its way into my first Martha book, Little House in the Highlands. I thought it particulary fitting in light of what little we knew about the real Martha Morse: that she married a man her family considered to be beneath her station, and she went to the New World to marry him and make a new life. "The lad, he was of courage bold; a gallant youth, nineteen years old; he’s made the hills and valleys roar, and the bonnie lassie, she’s gone with him…"
I loved those lines so much I quoted them in the dedication to Highlands.
|
‘Twas in the month of sweet July, Before the sun shone in the sky; There in between twa rigs o’ rye, Sure I heard twa lovers talking. He said, "My dear, I must gang away, "Of you, your father he tak’s great care "My father can fret and my mither frown, O, lassie, your fortune it is but sma’ The lassie’s courage began to fail, He’s ta’en her kerchie o’ linen fine, This lad he was of courage bold, |
" |
This couple they are married noo,
And they hae bairnies one or two,
And they bide in Brechin the winter through,
And in Montrose in summer.
This week’s Poetry Friday roundup can be found at Chicken Spaghetti.
January 9, 2007 @ 7:20 am | Filed under: Little House
Jennifer of As Cozy as Spring has me cracking up over her take on Pa Ingalls this morning.
Pa is driving me nuts! Obviously, I would not have been out there
on the frontier. I can see the conversation between my husband and
myself.Him: "I honey, I’m bored. I am going to drag you and our young
daughters away from our extended family to live across the country in
the middle of nowhere and you can sleep on the ground while I build you
a log cabin."Me: "What will we eat?"
Him: "Well, I’ll go off hunting all day while you tend to the chores
and take care of the children. I’ll bring home dead animals for you to
clean and cook."Me: Baffled silence.
The conversation continues. Too funny. And I’m so with you, Jenn. As a child, I always thought Ma was a bit cold. The Ma of the books, that is, as compared to the smiling-eyed Ma on TV. In the books, it seemed like no matter what Pa did, no matter how narrow the escape or how great the accomplishment, Ma’s response was always just "Oh, Charles." My heart was with Pa of the grand gesture, the wanderlust, the thirst for adventure. I scoffed along with Laura at the quiet, settled types who were unaccountably reluctant to hit the trail again.
And then I had kids. The end of Little House on the Prairie gives me such a pang, now. Caroline had just gotten her garden going. It tore me up to leave behind my berries and butterflies in Virginia. Imagine if that garden was one of your primary food sources and you’d worked your tail off to get your carefully guarded seeds into the ground! And now you find out the house is three miles on the wrong side of the line, three miles. Jenn’s take on that scene is dead on.
Caroline Quiner Ingalls, I give you much more props now that I’m a mama too.
December 14, 2006 @ 12:46 pm | Filed under: Little House
Remember all those great songs Pa Ingalls played on his fiddle? Ever wished you could hear them? A very kind reader just sent me the link to Arkansas Traveler, a program airing on NPR which features songs and stories from Laura’s Little House books.
A Prairie Home Companion‘s regular Riders in the Sky and other
Nashville artists provide musical performances, and actress Cherry
Jones reads selected stories from the books. Hosted by Noah Adams.Songs Heard In This Show:
- "F.C.’s Jig" – Mark O’Connor’s Appalachia Waltz Trio
- "Darling Nelly Gray" – Thomas Hampson (baritone) and Armen Guzelimian (piano)
- "The Arkansas Traveler" (arr. David Guion) – Eugene Rowley (piano)
- "Money Musk" – Pa’s Fiddle Band
- "The Girl I Left Behind Me" – Pat Enright and Pa’s Fiddle Band
- "Arkansas Traveler" – Pa’s Fiddle Band
- "The Irish Washerwoman" – Pa’s Fiddle Band
- "Old Dan Tucker" – Elizabeth Cook and Pa’s Fiddle Band
- "Amazing Grace" – Mark O’Connor
- "Summer" from Harvest Home Suite – Jay Ungar and Molly Mason
- "The Blue Juniata" – Riders In the Sky
- "The Gum Tree Canoe" – Buddy Greene and Pa’s Fiddle Band
- "Uncle Sam’s Farm" – Riders In the Sky
- "Cold Frosty Morning" – Butch Baldassari and David Schnaufer
- "The Devil’s Dream" – Butch Baldassari and David Schnaufer
- "Happy Land" – Peggy Duncan Singers and Pa’s Fiddle Band
I pecked out many of these tunes from The Little House Songbook several years ago, after which "Bonny Doon" (a song not included in the radio program, alas) became one of my favorite sweeping-and-scrubbing songs. (Right up there with "Loch Lomond," which my poor children have heard me belt out so many times that they probably shudder at the mere phrase "take the high road.") But I never learned "Nelly Gray"—wasn’t that one of Laura’s favorites?— and I hope I can get my computer to cooperate and let me listen to the radio show. Right now it’s being obstreperous.
Thanks so much, Monica, for the heads-up on this!
December 12, 2006 @ 7:13 am | Filed under: Little House
A Publisher’s Weekly article discusses some of the changes in the works for the Little House books. (Laura’s books are being reissued with new photographic covers and without the Garth Williams art, and no, I’m not thrilled about it.) You’ll still be able to get Garth’s art, though, both in the hardcover editions and the colorized paperbacks, which are being kept in print.
If you’d like to hear my editor’s thoughts on the reissues, check out the comments at Fuse #8.
