She began writing at eighteen, and from the small profits of stories and magazine articles saved enough to visit Italy, a cherished ambition.
For thirty-five years she was a well-known figure in the literary and artistic life of the city, and in 1882 was elected an honorary member of the Accademia delle Belle Arti.
Her principal publication was The Cathedral Builders (1899 and 1900), an important examination of the whole field of Romanesque architecture in relation to the Comacine masons.
The intention of the work was to attribute the entire genesis of mediaeval architecture to masonic guilds derived, so it is supposed, from the Roman Collegia.
[1]Apart from this work and numerous magazine articles, she published: She translated from Italian: Baxter died at the Villa Bianca near Florence on 10 November 1902.