1334002
Laura Ingalls Wilder
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Nice newly illustrated 1953 copy of Little House In the Big Woods
with Wilder's full signature tipped in
Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder, 1867-1957. American author. Hardback 1953 edition of Little House In the Big Woods with a signature of Wilder, Laura Ingalls Wilder, tipped in.
This is the Harper & Row "newly illustrated, uniform edition" published in 1953. In 1955, at the request of the owner, Wilder sent her signature to be tipped inside the book. Wilder has signed a 3½" full signature on a 2¾" x 3¾" piece of paper that has been tipped to the inside of the front cover.
We are separately offering Wilderʼs handwritten cover note by which she sent the signature and asked the owner not to send the book, because by then books were "too much trouble to rewrap and mail.” She was, she said, "not well" and therefore did not "answer letters any more nor autograph books." Click here to see the listing for that item. The owner kept both the note and this book until she died, and these items come from her estate.
Little House In the Big Woods was first published in 1932 with illustrations by Helen Sewell, the original illustrator of Wilder's books. In 1953, Harper & Row commissioned Garth Williams to re-illustrate the books, creating the wonderful images with which todayʼs readers and collectors are most familiar. This book is the 1953 reissue of this title.
This book, the first in Wilder's Little House series, tells the story of the Ingalls family—Laura and her Pa and Ma, older sister Mary, and baby Carrie—and life in the edge of Wisconsinʼs Big Woods in the 1870s. The family lived in a small log house, surrounded by miles of trees, far from the closest neighbors and far from any town. Life depended upon Pa's farming in the clearing around the house and upon his hunting and fishing. As the dust cover notes, life "had its hardships and difficulties in these early pioneer days, but it had a great deal of fun and excitement too, such as the times when folks gathered from miles around for the ʻsugaring downʼ season and doubled up at each other's houses, and when Christmas came bringing home-made toys and special goodies to eat for Laura and her sister Mary."
This hardbound book is in very good condition. The book is copiously illustrated by Williams, with an illustrated color cloth cover and 83 black-and-white illustrations. The binding is tight. The cover is clean and shows only a bit of shelf wear on the bottom of the back board. There are small stains near the edges of two pages and minor soiling, but otherwise the pages are clean and free of markings except for the ownerʼs signature on the front free end paper. The dust cover, which refers to Wilder's death at age 90 and thus appears to be a later piece, has some edge chipping and a few tears and is in fair to good condition.
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Note that the entire dust cover is not pictured.
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