[8] Their relationship became temporarily strained when Craig received, and accepted, a marriage proposal from the composer Martin Shaw in 1903, and Marshall attempted suicide.

[11] In 1909, Marshall turned her friend[12] Cicely Hamilton's short story How The Vote Was Won into a play,[7] and it became popular with women's suffrage groups throughout the United Kingdom and a "box office triumph.

In November 1909, Marshall appeared as the woman-soldier Hannah Snell in Hamilton's Pageant of Great Women, directed by Craig.

[11][15] Marshall's plays Macrena and On the East Side were produced by the Pioneer Players, as well as her translation (with Marie Potapenko) of The Theatre of the Soul by Nikolai Evreinov.

[15] St John, Edith Craig and Clare Atwood were friends with many artists and writers including lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall, who lived nearby in Rye.

[8] As Christopher St John in 1915, she published her autobiographical novel Hungerheart, which she had started in 1899, and which she based on her relationship with Edith Craig and her own involvement in the women's suffrage movement.