Her notable works include Poems (1865), Indian Myths: Or, Legends, Traditions, and Symbols of the Aborigines of America Compared with Those of Other Countries, Including Hindostan, Egypt, Persia, Assyria, and China (1884), Masks, Heads, and Faces: With Some Considerations Respecting the Rise and Development of Art (1891), and Nature and Human Nature (1892).

A foundation was laid in systematic research for her book, Indian Myths, or Legends and Traditions of the American Aborigines, Compared with Other Countries.

Trips to the West, to Colorado and California, brought her in sympathy with Native Americans, whose history and genius she had studied so earnestly.

Wherever she went, the scholars of Europe recognized her ability and conscientious work, giving her unusual privileges in the pursuit of her researches and showing cordial interest in her labor.

There she completed the object of her European visit, and returned to America to prepare for the publication of her work, Masks, Heads and Faces, with Some Considerations Respecting the Rise and Development of Art.

In support of these views Miss Emerson gives the results of her wide reading on all matters relating to North American Indians, and to the mythology of different countries, showing the family likeness that runs through the legends, traditions and symbols, and is even seen in the languages of the aborigines of America, and the races of the East,—Persians, Assyrians, Hindoos, Chinese and Egyptians.

These legends and myths deal with God, with the origin of man and of evil, with all the powers of nature, with forms of worship, and with birds, animals, trees and rocks.

They are full of strange and interesting things, and have a great deal of wild fancy and poetic beauty mingled with their childishness.

Miss Emerson deals with the capacities and prospects of the red race as a race, not with the wrongs of the separate tribes, or the injustice and inhumanity of the United States Government toward them; but her book is a claim, based on history and ethnology, not on religion or philanthropy, for the full recognition of Indians as belonging to the brotherhood of men, with rights to be respected and powers to be developed.

"[4] Masks, Heads, and Faces, With some considerations respecting the Rise and Development of Art (Houghton Mifflin, 1891)[5] was reviewed by McClurg who stated, "Mrs. Emerson's book fills a somewhat unique place in literature, since it explains the earliest incentives to artistic expression.

A specially interesting interpretation is given of landscape painting and Gothic architecture, with reference to the spiritual qualities which give significance to pictures and buildings.

Her interpretation of the Laocoön as suggesting, in the serpents' undulating folds, "the gliding stanchless waves of the sea, against whose onward movement there is no barrier," is new to us.