Settlement on 'Little House' Books

After more than a year and a half of legal wrangling over the ownership of two of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House novels, The Little Town on the Prairie has festered into The Big Settlement on the Estate. The author's publisher, HarperCollins, and the Wilder estate have tentatively agreed to pay $875,000 to the Wright County Library System, in southern Missouri. In return, the Wright County Library Board has agreed to relinquish its claim to the copyrights on The Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years.

In October 1999, the library board filed suit against Wilder's publisher and estate, claiming that it was entitled to more than 20 years worth of royalties from two of the Little House books. The author had stipulated in her 1952 will that the literary copyrights be turned over to the library upon the death of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. But instead of following her mother's request, Lane bequeathed the entire estate to a friend, Roger Lea MacBride, who had helped turn the Little House books into a popular television series. When MacBride died in 1995, he, in turn, left the estate, valued to be as much as $100 million, to his daughter, Abigail MacBride Allen.

In January, a Jackson County probate judge ruled that the library system had a legitimate claim to the royalties from The Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years. Although the tentative settlement would be awarded to the Wright County Library Board, which oversees four libraries, the financially strapped Laura Ingalls Wilder Library, in Mansfield, is likely to be the main beneficiary.