At odd moments, she made her first attempt at story-writing, story-telling she had begun before, gathering about her the younger children to listen to the adventures of some small heroine.

Having had from her earliest reading an absorbing interest in biography, one of her first inspirations in bookmaking was the thought of biography—to write lives of people as she found them, using their weaknesses, hardships, evil or noble conduct to point truth to others.

[5] In 1874, when she was disabled, she became interested in girls and women shut in from the outside world, and the thought of a society for mutual comfort occurred to her.

It was an organized society, with an advisory board, and it published monthly a magazine call the Open Window.

[5] Under her maiden name, she wrote a number of books, among the better known being Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline, Bek's First Corner, Marigold, Dolly French's Household, Miss Prudence, and Fifteen.

[3] Other popular books included Other Folk, Rue's Helps, The Story of Hannah, Isabel's Between Times, Rizpah's Heritage, From Flax to Linen, Three Women, Three and Twenty, Paul French's Way, Electa, Uncle Justice Seth's Will, The Fairfax Girls, Second Best, Set Free, Fourfold, Marigold, Other Folk, Miss Prudence Cromwell, The Story of Hannah, Looking Seaward, Dorothy's Islands, Goldenrod Farm, Shar Burbank.