“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

By the age of three I was already drawing—scribbling, experimenting—and began writing stories in grade school. Many of them were fantasies involving cowboys and Indians and detectives and world adventurers that I crudely illustrated on my yellow school pads. I still have a collection of those: strangely innocent but moving. (I was especially fascinated by horses, but have yet to ride one!) While a sophomore I wrote a novel that I typed on the same kind of yellow paper and bound into a book, I even tried—unsuccessfully—to sell it. I still have that book, also.

Jane made her first sales of short stories—science-fiction fantasies. And riding her old-fashioned secondhand bicycle she also sold cutlery and household supplies door-to-door for two out-of-town manufacturers, and did well at those efforts, too! She turned down an offer to be a district manager for one of the companies. In 1960 we moved 15 miles across the Pennsylvania border to Elmira, NY, to live in Jimmy Spaziani’s apartment house on West Water Street. I designed greeting cards for a nationally known company, and was to work there off and on for several years. Jane worked part-time as a secretary for Elmira’s Arnot Art Museum, and wrote two unpublished novels—and one that did sell. The Rebellers was published in a two-novel paperback edition that she disliked intensely. Without judging the other author’s work, she just didn’t want to share her first book with anyone else.