After Dodd wrote a paper on the Concord School of Philosophy for Appleton's Magazine, English journals copied it, a French translation was reprinted in Émile Littré's Revue Philosophique, and the author found her services in growing demand.

The travel and study laid the foundation for the education she received after returning home to New York, where she also spent some time being introduced to society.

[2] Dodd began her literary career providing articles for newspapers and magazines, chiefly the New York Evening Post, Appleton's, Harper's, and Lippincott's.

The originality of the subject chosen, and the ability she demonstrated with the translation, commanded the editor's attention, and Dodd was subsequently assigned a commission to supply certain articles and editorials to the paper.

Carrying the necessary letters of introduction, she made her second visit to Paris, prepared to meet and study the political leaders of the new republic.

[3] Traveling to Rome with the sculptor, William Henry Rinehart, she gave Harper's a description of the famous carnival,[1] elaborately illustrated by the artist.

She offered an appreciation of the French character and temperament, and a broad, tolerant view of social and moral questions as features of her comments.

[2][1] In The Republic, Dodd attempted the prophetic role, and presented a view of life at the middle of the 21st century, when the theories of Henry George would become completely realized.

The book's universe was based on a rigid equality, one house being precisely like every other house; where everyone's clothes were the same; where women were on the same footing as men; where there was no home life; where the children were reared in a government "kindergarten" without a parental love or care; where even food was prescribed by a state official, and in the shape of pellets sent whirling into the socialist's alimentary canal through a government "culinary duct"; where the people were pining away from mental and physical inactivity; where there was no God, no religion, no object in life worth living for, but there was a centralized government.