Mary Roberts Rinehart

Another serendipitous discovery in Pittsburgh–this marker to Mary Roberts Rinehart, which is on the same street with the Gertrude Stein marker! My brother & sister first spotted it & I excitedly told them that I had quoted Rinehart’s dramatic World War I reporting in the preface of my book “Where the Action Was: Women War Correspondents in World War II.”  The marker reads: “Home of Mary Roberts Rinehart Prolific author (1876-1953) of “The Circular Staircase”–written in this house in 1907–and one of America’s first and most popular writers of mystery stories, as well as fiction and biography; the first female American war correspondent (World War I); a pioneer scriptwriter during Hollywood’s golden era; and an outspoken, ambitious, and independent advocate of a lifestyle of opportunity for women. Her characterizations of the independent female and her own adventurous life, combining career and family, heralded the emergence of the twentieth century women.” (p.s. She was one of America’s early female war correspondent, not the “first”.)

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