A sister, Olive Louise, four years Mary's junior, would later gain recognition as an author of children's books and as a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist.

During the stock market crash of 1903, the couple lost their savings, spurring Rinehart's efforts at writing as a way to earn income.

Her regular contributions to The Saturday Evening Post were immensely popular and helped the magazine mold American middle-class taste and manners.

In 1911, after the publication of five successful books and two plays, the Rineharts moved to the Pittsburgh suburb of Glen Osborne, where they purchased a large home at the corner of Orchard and Linden Streets called "Cassella."

[6] Today, a Mary Roberts Rinehart Nature Park sits in the borough of Glen Osborne at 1414 Beaver Street, Sewickley, Pennsylvania.

In 1947, a Filipino chef who had worked for her for 25 years fired a gun at her and then attempted to slash her with knives until other servants rescued her.

The interview "I Had Cancer" was published in a 1947 issue of the Ladies' Home Journal; in it, Rinehart encouraged women to have breast examinations.

Rinehart received a Mystery Writers of America special award a year after she published her last novel, and an honorary doctorate in literature from George Washington University.

Carole Lombard and Gary Cooper starred in I Take This Woman (1931), an early sound film based on Rinehart's novel Lost Ecstasy (1927).

"[15] Ogden Nash parodied the school in his poem Don't Guess Let Me Tell You: "Sometimes the Had I But Known then what I know now I could have saved at least three lives by revealing to the Inspector the conversation I heard through that fortuitous hole in the floor."

She also wrote a long series of comic stories about Letitia (Tish) Carberry, that was frequented in the Saturday Evening Post over a number of years.

She became "obsessed by the injustice, the wanton waste and cost" of the war, and wrote extensively of the things she had seen in 10 articles for the Saturday Evening Post, which were later republished in the London Times.

During this time she interviewed many famous historical figures, including Albert I of Belgium, Winston Churchill, French General Ferdinand Foch, and Mary of Teck.

The notes from her interview with Albert the I she sent to President Wilson in the hopes of swaying him from neutrality to fight alongside the Belgians, though it didn't immediately work.