A list of Lawrence's published novels to 1945 includes: Miss Brandt, Adventuress; Red Heels; Bohemian Glass; Drums of Youth; Silken Sarah; The Madonna of Seven Moons; Madam Holle; The Crooked Smile; Overture to Life; The Bridge of Wonder; and Step Light, Lady.
Her best-known supernatural works include Number Seven, Queer Street (Robert Hale, 1945), a collection that purports to be the case histories of an occult detective, Dr Miles Pennoyer, as related by his assistant Jerome Latimer.
The Rent in the Veil is a fantasy involving a time slip to Ancient Rome, and Bride of Darkness is a tale of witchcraft in the modern world.
It was the resulting large number of inquiries that prompted editor Maurice Barbanell to suggest that Lawrence compile and expand upon those articles in book form, which she undertook at London between August 1942 and May 1943.
Apprehensive that her readers might be disappointed that her latest book was not a further novel or book of short stories, Lawrence took care to explain that she had not recently "taken to Spiritualism", but rather had been deeply interested in it for many years: "My interest in it dates actually from the moment when I saw a near relation three nights after he died, when he gave me specific instructions about the finding of a box containing important papers.