From Her Own Point of View: Rediscovering Rose Wilder Lane, Literary Journalist

Abstract

This article discusses the fifty-year writing career and works of Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968). To date, most scholarship about Lane has focused on Lane's relationship to her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Wilder's more famous books. This article argues that Lane's work deserves its own examination, that her contribution to literary journalism should be recognized, and that her story illustrates a need in scholarship to look for alternate sources of literary journalism. It documents Lane's journalistic career from its beginnings “On the Margins” with the San Francisco Bulletin in 1915 until its end with a masterpiece of literary journalism from Saigon in 1965. Lane's work shines because she committed absolutely to a point of view in telling both her fiction and nonfiction stories. That point of view varied, but as her fiction career passed behind her, it was increasingly her own, as she gave voice to “American” values of individualism and freedom from government interference.