She wrote Voices from the Void (1919), an account of her life as a medium, and Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde (1923).

Dowden was closely linked to the Irish literary world through her father, knowing, among others W. B. Yeats and Bram Stoker.

Her daughter, the Abbey Theatre stage designer Dorothy Travers-Smith, married the playwright Lennox Robinson.

In 1891 she moved to London to study music, but was forced to travel back to Dublin to look after her father when her mother died.

In Voices from the Void she claimed that the spirit of Hugh Lane, who had drowned in the sinking of the Lusitania, spoke to her before she knew of his death in the disaster.

He dismissed Thomas Hardy as a "harmless rustic" but admired George Meredith for his appreciation of beauty.

Nine dirty years mine age, hairs hoar, mummeries failend, snowdrift to my elpow, deff as Adder.

"[6] After Dowden was consulted by Alfred Dodd, a writer who wanted to prove that Francis Bacon was the true author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare, Dowden claimed to communicate with Bacon via her spirit guide "Johannes".

[7] Dowden was later contacted by Percy Allen who wanted to prove that Shakespeare's works were written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, not Bacon.

Another "revelation" was that Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream was a portrait of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, who was in fact the illegitimate son of Oxford and Queen Elizabeth I.

[8] Dowden's biographer Edmund Bentley later confirmed that Allen's was the final and true revelation, that from his teenage years Allen had been destined to be the bearer of the ultimate truth: "a plan had been worked out by spirit people interested in his earthly life that he should be the means of finally unravelling the great mystery of Shakespeare's origin and work.

[8] In 1941 Dowden, who was living in Chelsea, London at the time, claims to have received messages from "Johannes" commenting on the personalities of the principal national leaders during World War II.

These were conveyed to the writer Peter Fripp as analyses of the motives and actions of Hitler and Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt.

Seen from the spirit-world, Dowd claimed Hitler was not evil but rather "a man whose stars threw him into the world with vast disadvantages, with overwhelming ambition sweltering in his soul, and with an infinite capacity for receiving influences and suggestions from our side."