Susan Edmonstone Ferrier Ferrier visited Walter Scott at Ashiestiel Farm and House on the banks of the River Tweed, near Clovenfords in the Scottish Borders, and again in 1829 and 1831 at his new house, Abbotsford. They enjoyed each other's company and he wrote of her: "This gifted personage besides having great talents has conversation the least exigeant of any author, female at least..., simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee, and all this without the least affectation of the blue stocking." He mentioned her in the same sentence as Maria Edgeworth and Frances Burney in 1825. Ferrier's account of the
On the Banks of Plum Creek and her sister have to quit school because it closed when the grasshoppers arrive. Pa becomes lost near their home during a severe four-day blizzard. The novel ends with the happy family reunited on Christmas Eve. Although Plum Creek (in Redwood County, Minnesota) is near the town of Walnut Grove, the name is not mentioned in the novel. Virginia Kirkus had handled Wilder's debut novel "Little House in the Big Woods" for Harper & Brothers as its book editor from 1926 to 1932. In "Kirkus Reviews", her semi-monthly bulletin from 1933, she awarded this novel a starred review (as she