[3] It was a bold move on her part as the writer in question was not known for his progressive views,[4] but the publication established her as an all‑round woman of letters.

[6] As Janet Wilson wrote in The Guardian, "She was friend to several generations of women, especially writers, who admired her as a pioneer for breaking with social convention and carving out a successful literary life at a time when this seemed risky".

Her poetry, which continues to influence New Zealand writers,[10] was not all about daffodils; she could speak with a committed voice, as is evidenced in the poem "Nuclear Bomb Test, Mururoa Atoll," which begins: Although in life she stayed as far away as was possible from all forms of organised religion, in death her quotations do apparently find their way into various church settings in New Zealand, a proof – if one be needed – of their deep innate spirituality.

She was 75, the mother of six children, five of them daughters, one of whom (Rachel, the fourth child) committed suicide in 1975 (the event is dealt with, poetically, in Edmond's poem-sequence Wellington Letter).

The Times of London wrote in her obituary (9 February 2000; p. 23) that she acquired 'a sharp new consciousness of her nationality' through her absence from New Zealand after a year as the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellow in Menton in the South of France, ending in 1982.