Following another bout of illness in 1892 Bottomley left the bank and moved to Cartmel, Lancashire to live a life of passionate intense meditation and contemplation[1] and began writing poetry.

Bottomley began writing poetry in the 1890s and was influenced by the Romantic poets and even more so by such later figures as Rossetti and Algernon Swinburne.

While he mainly kept in contact with them through letters, he did make occasional visits to London, and also received visitors such as Arthur Ransome and Edward Thomas at his home.

His first book The Mickle Drede and Other Verses was printed privately at Kendal in 1896, and he wrote many more poems and plays, generally performed by amateurs or in experimental theatre.

[5] Bottomley also edited the poetry of Isaac Rosenberg in 1922, whom as a correspondent he had encouraged from 1915; while his close associate the composer Edgar Bainton (1880–1956) set The Crier by Night to music.

[7] A Scottish influence (echoing Yeats' Irish revival) appears in his late plays,[8] while much of his earlier writing was rooted in Lakeland.

About 150 of these works were displayed in a temporary exhibition at Tullie House, "Pre-Raphaelites and Beyond: the Emily and Gordon Bottomley Bequest", from 7 July to 16 September 2001.