The eventual title, “Little House in the Big Woods,” did not appear on the list but was a portentous choice. In contrast to another American children’s classic, Little Women, published in two volumes in 1868–1869, when Laura Ingalls was an infant, Wilder’s final title turned attention away from the protagonist, emphasizing instead the security—and insecurity—of home. Over the life of the series, it would sound a perpetual note of ambiguity, repeatedly employing a symbol of permanence, the house as a fixed place of abode, to represent the family’s incessant wanderings and displacement.
