Missouri Library System Sues
for Laura Ingalls Wilder Royalties
The Wright County Library System has filed a lawsuit claiming that the system’s Laura Ingalls Wilder branch is entitled to a substantial amount of the revenues from works by the Little House on the Prairie author.
The suit is based on Wilder’s 1952 will, which the library board recently discovered in county probate records while preparing to apply for grants to fund improvements to its branches, the Kansas City Star reported October 5.
The will stated that, following the death of Wilder’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, copyrights and revenue derived from her books should go to the county library’s branch in Mansfield, which was named for the author in 1951. But after Lane’s death in 1968, the lawsuit claims, the rights and royalties instead went to Lane’s sole heir, her longtime friend Roger Lea MacBride. When MacBride died in 1995, he left the rights to Wilder’s works to his daughter.
The library’s only royalty check, for $28,011, came from Wilder’s publisher in 1972, according to the Star.
Posted October 11, 1999.
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