Olive Rabe
Olive Rabe was an accomplished American writer and lawyer, born in Chicago, likely in the late 1800s. She earned her law degree from Northwestern University in 1916 and became a partner at the Labor Bureau of the Middle West in Chicago before transitioning to a law firm. In the late 1920s, she formed a significant personal and professional partnership with Aileen Fisher, which led them to purchase a ranch in Colorado. Rabe's writing career flourished after their move, as she began contributing law articles to national publications and co-authored several children's books with Fisher, including notable works like "We Dickinsons," which explores the life of poet Emily Dickinson. Her literary contributions often intertwined themes of history and children's education, with a focus on engaging narratives. In her later years, Rabe became interested in spiritual studies and lived a quiet life in Boulder until her passing in 1968. Her legacy includes a blend of legal accomplishment and creative literary works, reflecting her diverse interests and experiences.
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Subject Terms
Olive Rabe
Author
- Born: c. 1895
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: December 1, 1968
- Place of death: Boulder, Colorado
Biography
Olive Rabe was the daughter of Henry Byer Rabe, a teaming contractor, and Sarah Louise Haen Hanson Rabe. She was secretive about the date of her birth, but presumably it was sometime in the last five years of the nineteenth century. She was born in Chicago and received a law degree from Northwestern University in 1916, where she gained admission to Phi Beta Kappa.
Upon completing her degree, Rabe held a variety of jobs until 1921, when she became a partner in the Labor Bureau of the Middle West in Chicago. She left that position in 1926 to join the law firm of Zimring and Rabe as a partner, continuing in that capacity until 1932.
In the late 1920’s, Rabe met Aileen Fisher. Soon the two were living together, and in 1932 they moved to Colorado, where they purchased a two-hundred-acre ranch in the foothills outside of Boulder. They lived on the ranch for the next thirty years and then settled in Boulder.
Rabe long had an interest in writing and after 1932 she became a freelance writer, contributing popular law articles to many national magazines, including the Reader’s Digest. Her activities during the years of the Great Depression until the publication of her first book are cloaked in obscurity.
That book, United Nations Plays and Programs, a book of children’s plays, was published in 1954, and like all of her books was cowritten with Fisher. Two years later, Rabe and Fisher published another collection of children’s plays, Patriotic Plays and Programs, and they subsequently published two more juvenile books on related themes, United Nations Day and Human Rights Day.
One of Rabe and Fisher’s most successful juvenile books was We Dickinsons: The Life of Emily Dickinson as Seen Through the Eyes of Her Brother Austin. This book, replete with appealing illustrations by Ellen Raskin, is filled with sensitive insights into the inner life of the mysterious Belle of Amherst, as Dickinson was frequently called. The success of the Dickinson book encouraged Rabe and Fisher to produce a similar volume, We Alcotts: The Story of Louisa M. Alcott’s Family as Seen Through the Eyes of “Marmee,” Mother of Little Women, published in 1968.
Rabe spent her later years in Boulder, Colorado, where she and Fisher enjoyed hiking on mountain trails. She became involved in studies of extrasensory perception and New Thought, which she listed as her religion. She died in Boulder in December, 1968; Fisher lived until 2002.