I'm not the only writer who was born today.
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| Mary Roberts Rinehart 1914 |
Mary Roberts
Rinehart was born on August 12, 1876. She studied nursing and married a doctor. After the stock market crash of 1903, she
turned to writing as a way to make money. And she did!
She wrote dozens of
books and plays, and hundreds of short stories and articles. She was a war
correspondent at the Belgian front during WWI. She had breast cancer, like me, and
was one of the first to share that experience in an article in The Ladies Home Journal.
Many of her books were mysteries; she was often called the
American Agatha Christie. She’s credited with the phrase: “The butler did it!”
because he had, in her novel The Door.
In another book, she created a criminal who always wore a
bat costume. This character inspired Bob Kane’s “Batman.”
Would she be surprised to find out that those two memes live on
one hundred years later?
Happy birthday, Mary! I'm proud to share your day. I wonder what aspect of my life I will look back on and think, as so many of her
characters did in her mysteries, Had I But Known…..
