In the 1970s, Baby Peggy reemerged as author and film historian Diana Serra Cary, publishing two well-received accounts of life in the silent age, "The Hollywood Posse" (1975) and "Hollywood's Children" (1979). She also regularly contributed to journals documenting that era and made appearances at gatherings of film collectors. In 1996, her memoir "Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy?" was published. A candid look at the effects, both good and bad, of working as a child actor, it proved that some things hadn't much changed in nearly seventy years. Baby Peggy had been the breadwinner of her family and had suffered for it in much the same way that a contemporary figure like Macauley Culkin had.