[2] Her father, Edward Trevelyan, reported his occupation as "private means" on the 1911 Census, which also showed the family as employing four domestic servants.

[10][11] While at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, she won the Newdigate Prize for a 250-line poem in blank verse titled, "Julia, Daughter of Claudius".

Taking its title from the play by John Webster, the book told of an experiment undertaken by an English spinster, Virginia Hutton, to raise an orangutan she names Appius as a human.

The book drew heavily on her experiences at Oxford, showing an undergraduate, Mina Cook, and her relationships while a student at the fictional "Queen Anne's College."

Reviewing the book in the Daily Mail, Compton Mackenzie wrote, "The whole thing is extremely well done, and by the time I had finished with it the atmosphere of damp heat had made me feel like an overfed gloxinia.

The Times Literary Supplement review called it, "a book which is almost unreadable in its intensity, but which compels one to go on reading in spite of almost physical discomfort, by the admiration one feels for the author's ingenuity and her uncanny insight into human beings.

In the Manchester Guardian, one reviewer wrote, "The use of a modern technique by which unspoken thoughts are shot on to the page in machine-gun sentences generally beginning with the verb does not suffice to make the mutual attraction of the young people credible.... Miss Trevelyan leaves one reader unconvinced.

Two Thousand Million Man-Power, published in 1937, showed the influence of John Dos Passos, as Trevelyan interwove headlines from newspaper stories, radio bulletins, and newsreels into the story of a London couple, Katherine and Robert, as they go through courtship and early marriage while dealing with financial worries, unemployment, and social standing.

In her review for The Times Literary Supplement, Leonora Eyles wrote, "There is pity in this book and something of horror: it is as though the author had looked on human nature and turned away with a mixture of disgust and compassion from what she has seen.

It told the story of a lower-class girl, Jean, who has visions, which leads her to work as a fortune teller and then marriage to an astrologer who gradually corrupts her powers.