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Her first work was mainly short stories and poems. Her very first work was verse for children. Her first check was for $25, the reward of a short article telling how she had systematized the work of the household with two maids and a negro “buttons.” She sold one or two of the poems for children and with a sense of guilt at the desertion of her family made a trip to New York. She made the weary rounds in one day, “a heart-breaking day, going from publisher to publisher.” In two places she saw responsible persons and everywhere her verses were turned down. “But one man was very kind to me, and to that publishing house I later sent The Circular Staircase, my first novel. They published it and some eight other books of mine.”

In her first year of sustained effort at writing, Mrs. Rinehart made about $1,200. She was surrounded by “sane people who cried me down,” but who were merry without being contemptuous. Her husband has been her everlasting help. He “has stood squarely behind me, always. His belief in me, his steadiness and his sanity and his humor have kept me going, when, as has happened now and then, my little world of letters has shaken under my feet.” To the three boys their mother’s work has been a matter of course ever since they can remember. “I did not burst on them gloriously. I am glad to say that they think I am a much better mother than I am a writer, and that the family attitude in general has been attentive but not supine. They regard it exactly as a banker’s family regards his bank.”