Her poems and articles were published in publications across the United States; in 1908 the newspaper The Silent Worker called Fischer "one of America's great deaf poets".

[1] She attended local schools until the spring of 1854, when she lost her hearing after becoming ill with whooping cough and typhoid fever.

[2] She instructed several deafblind children and in 1880 took a position as a residential dean at the Texas School for the Deaf, but poor health required her to return to her family's home in Savanna.

[7] Fischer threatened to start a separate deaf women's college as far from Gallaudet as possible if the administrators did not change their policy.

[8] Fischer's friends Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Greenleaf Whittier gave favorable reviews to the book.

[2] When her husband died in July 1904, she moved to live with her sister in Rockford, Illinois, and continued to write poetry and articles for the deaf community.