In 1854, Lewis published in Graham's Magazine a series of critical and biographical essays, entitled “Art and Artists in America."

While in Italy, in 1863, she wrote her first tragedy, Helemah; or, The Fall of Montezuma, which she published in New York, during a protracted visit to the United States.

The success of this work encouraged her to write Sappho of Lesbos, a tragedy (London, 1868) which reached a seventh edition, was translated into modern Greek and played in Athens.

She began writing very early, her first efforts, a series of stories, appearing during her school days in the Family Magazine of Albany, New York.

While in Italy, in 1863, she wrote her tragedy of Helémah, or the Fall of Montezuma, which was published on her return to the United States the next year (New York, 1864).

[7] Lamartine referred to her as a "female Petrarch.” Yet, within ten years after her death, she had been so completely forgotten that she was not deemed worthy a place in Stedman and Hutchinson's exhaustive Library of American Literature.