Ruth Stout
Ruth Imogen Stout was born on June 14, 1884, in Girard, Kansas. At 18, she moved to New York, where she worked in various roles, including baby nurse, bookkeeper, secretary, business manager, and factory worker. She also coordinated lectures and debates, ran a tea shop in Greenwich Village, and even assisted with a mind-reading act. In 1923, she traveled to Russia with fellow Quakers for famine relief.
In June 1929, at the age of 45, Stout married and moved to a 55-acre farm in Connecticut, where Stout began experimenting with gardening. She authored articles in Organic Gardening and Farming and published books such as How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back (1955) and The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book (1971). Stout also wrote on personal development in the books It’s a Woman’s World (1960) and If You Would Be Happy (1962). She passed away on August 22, 1980. And, yes, her brother is Rex Stout, author of the Nero Wolfe books.
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Do your own thinking and follow through with actions…do what you feel like doing and not what’s expected of you…don’t believe you are caught in the cogs of a wheel from which you can’t escape. These are the tenets of Ruth Stout’s no-nonsense, endlessly practical 1960 book, It’s a Woman’s World. Stout, author of the much-admired The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book, may not challenge traditional gender roles, but she displays a fierce independence along with a wealth of specific advice about how to upend life’s daily challenges.
In this 1962 book, Ruth Stout, author of How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back and It’s a Woman's World, shows in her inimitably outspoken, common-sense, and practical fashion how to achieve more enjoyment and peace of mind in daily living by recognizing that humble joys are better than none, making our minds toe the mark, growing up emotionally, not depending on things that can desert you, and throwing petty values on the trash pile, among other techniques.