In 1898, after the death of her father, she was taken to live with her maternal grandmother, Annie Malkin in Vancouver, British Columbia, but moved back to England at fourteen to attend a school for Methodist ministers' daughters.

[2] Ethel Wilson's first published work appeared in 1919 as The Surprising Adventures of Peter, a children's serial that ran in the Vancouver Daily Province.

Ethel preferred to ignore this debut, and instead later claimed her publishing career began in the 1930s while in the car as her husband made medical calls.

Her first published novel, Hetty Dorval, appeared in 1947, and was followed, seven years later by Swamp Angel (1954), generally thought of as her most accomplished work.

[citation needed] Yet in 1958 at the University of British Columbia, in a talk entitled "An Approach to Some Novels," Wilson stated that there was no school of 'Canadian novel-writing,' nor was one necessary.