[5] She showed an early inclination for literary work, and at eighteen years of age, she was a contributor to the Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette.

A volume of historic sketches, with the title Don't You Remember?, which dealt with early events in her home town, Columbus, and the Scioto Valley, Ohio, was successful.

When her "Social and Literary Recollections of W. D. Howells" appeared in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, the reviewer referred to the writer as "Mr. L. R. McCabe," her initials only being given.

[6] In 1889, in the Paris Exposition Universelle, she did her first work for the American Press Association, and her letters were favorably received from the start.

[6] During her visit to France, she went over the scenes of General Lafayette's life, sleeping two nights in the room where he was born at Château de Chavaniac in Auvergne.

McCabe also traveled 7,000 miles (11,000 km) into Alaska, spending four months in Nome and skirting the Siberian coast.

She was the second woman to lecture before the New-York Historical Society, her subject being "Madame de Lafayette, America's Half-Forgotten Friend".

[15] A biography, Lida Rose McCabe: An Early Ohio Journalist, was published by Mary Catherine Foley in 1989.