Writer She showed an early inclination for literary work, and at eighteen years of age, she was a contributor to the
Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette. Since then, she was active in newspaper and magazine work and more ambitious ventures in book publishing. 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. For some time, those initials covered her identity from those who failed to detect "only a woman" in her writing style. 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. Her first intention was to spend a few months abroad and then return to her home, to engage in literary work. A love of Paris and its wonderful possibilities, and a desire to become familiar with the
French language, kept her there for more than a year. 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 into
Alaska, spending four months in
Nome and skirting the
Siberian coast. She wrote for several
Ohio papers starting when she was thirteen years old. Her later work, with widening circles of readers, was through the American Press Association, McClure's Syndicate,
Harper's publications,
St. Nicholas Magazine, ''
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Popular Science Monthly
, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, The Cosmopolitan
, and The Christian Union. She was a contributor to Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York papers, and after making her home in New York, she wrote for the New-York Tribune
, New York Herald, New York World, and Commercial Advertiser''. She wrote various books, among which was ''Don't You Remember? Historical Sketches of Ohio
and Occupations and Compensations of Women'' (Tribune Pub. Co., N.Y.).
The American Girl at College, a series of papers that originally appeared in a newspaper, gave a wide range of practical, though somewhat discursive information as to the character, work, habits, social life, studies of college life for American women.
Book News Monthly (1894) commented, "The tone is a little crude and the standard immature."
Ardent Adrienne (1930) was a biography of
Madame de La Fayette.
Lecturer Well versed in the theory and the execution of art, music and literature, McCabe lectured on travel and art. She opened Ethical Lectures at
St. Xavier's College, New York City, to women. She served as regular staff in Public School Lecture Course of New York City. She was the second woman to lecture before the
New-York Historical Society, her subject being "Madame de Lafayette, America's Half-Forgotten Friend". In January 1920, she addressed the
New York Genealogical and Biographical Society with a lecture on "Madame de Lafayette, America's Half-Forgotten Friend", which address was illustrated by many
stereopticon slides. On the occasion of commemorating the first decade of the Watterson Reading Circle, a Catholic reading circle in Columbus, Ohio, McCabe gave a lecture on "The Preaching Friars in Florentine Art". ==Personal life==