When LAURA INGALLS WILDER started writing her classic "Little House" book series in 1932, she had no idea of creating fame for herself or the places where she had lived. She wrote simply to preserve tales of a lost era in American history, the pioneer period she vividly recalled from her growing-up years on the midwestern frontier in the 1870's and 1880's. When Laura completed her eight-volume series in 1943, she had achieved a lasting and substantial literary picture of pioneer life as she had experienced it in Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, and South Dakota.