One of the greatest collections of stories of pioneer life, James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales – named following the footwear worn by the central character, Natty Bumppo – are set on the American frontier between 1740 and 1804. The series begins using the Pioneers (1823), a novel charting the spreading civilization of America’s wild territories. The Last of the Mohicans (1826) describes the French-Indian War of 1757. The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840) and also the Deerslayer (1841) complete the tale. Scotsman R M Ballantyne’s hugely successful The Young Fur Traders (1856) is based on the author’s experiences as a youth employed by the Hudson Bay Trading Organization to trade using the local Indians.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiographical Small House stories are even much more popular now than when they were first written. The Small Home within the Big Woods (1932) introduces the Ingalls family, Ma, Pa, Mary, baby Carrie and Laura herself, and the pains and pleasures of log cabin existence. Eight much more books, including an unfinished novel found following the author’s death, describe the family’s various homes and hardships, and Laura’s later existence as a wife and teacher. The stories are unusual in that they ‘grow up’ using the reader, becoming increasingly adult in style as the series progresses.

Other tales set in America’s pioneer days consist of Carol Ryrie Brink’s Caddie Woodlawn (1935) and its sequel Magical Melons (1944). New Zealand looks to its pioneer days in E MEllin’s The Kids of Clearwater Bay (1969) and the Greenstone Axe (1975), although Ivan Southhall’s King from the Sticks (1979) is the very first in a trilogy about Australia’s early history.