The Little House TV series of the 1970s and early 80s offered up an idyllic, sanitized version of Laura Ingalls' childhood

Back in the 1930s, publishers cut out scenes from much of the time the Ingalls family spent in Burr Oak, Iowa, and Walnut Grove, Minnesota, on the basis that they were unsuitable for children to read about.

In one particularly harrowing incident, one of Ingalls' drunken neighbours pours kerosene through the window of his house and sets it on fire before dragging his wife around by her hair. He only stops when Laura's father Pa intervenes.

The story also includes intriguing details of a love triangle "gone awry" - although it's not yet clear what characters are involved.

Even Pa, portrayed as a saintly figure in the books and subsequent Little House TV series, was apparently a more flawed character in real life.

The story includes one scene in which Mr. Ingalls skipped on paying rent to his landlord, deriding him as a "rich old skinflint" (very un-Pa like language, as anyone who has read the books will know).

Despite being pitched to children, the Little House series was stark at times, with the hardships of pioneer life clearly laid out in books such as Little House On The Prairie and The Long Winter - when the whole Ingalls family nearly starved to death after being cut off from vital supplies by snow on the railroads.

But it seems the first draft of Laura's books contains a few more gritty home truths about the family's time out West.

Love triangles, alcoholism and domestic violence: the gritty truth behind Laura Ingalls' prairie childhood