About: Margaret Jewett Smith Bailey
Margaret Jewett Smith Bailey (1812?–1882) was an American pioneer, missionary, and author from Oregon. Bailey, using the pen name Ruth Rover, wrote one of the earliest literary works published in Oregon, The Grains, or, Passages in the Life of Ruth Rover, with Occasional Pictures of Oregon, Natural and Moral. According to historian Edwin Bingham in the foreword to the 1986 edition, Grains is "part autobiography, part religious testimonial, part history and travelogue", but "by stretching the definition, The Grains may be called a novel, the first novel written and published on the Pacific coast."
