Her first collection, À travers le voile, was published in 1902 and noticed by Stuart Merrill, who compared the poet to Verlaine and highlighted her as one of the leading figures of the Belle Époque poetic revival, along with Lucie Delarue-Mardrus and Anna de Noailles.

After Clartés (1907), which demonstrated her desire to appear as a literate woman, in contrast to the "peasant poet" image held by critics, her collections Les Pastorales (1909) and L'Essor victorieux (1911) oscillated between paganism and eroticism.

Overshadowed by the success of other figures to whom she is often compared, such as Delarue-Mardrus and Anna de Noailles, she published two more collections, Ce n'est rien, c'est la Vie in 1924 and Passions in 1938, in which the early love of life gives way to disappointment and melancholy.

One of the most characteristic features of her poetry is her use of "odoral" images, a term coined for her by Remy de Gourmont and regularly used thereafter to describe the precision with which she evokes the scents of nature.

[2] She enjoyed a free education and grew up in the heart of nature, in the foothills of the Vosges mountains, spending her time studying botany and everything around her, painting and playing music.

[4] She wrote to Alphonse Séché, for the anthology of women poets he published in 1908: "I have wasted a lot of time on various dilettantisms, ranging from physiology to botany; interested in plants, beasts, everything that is life; dividing my hours between fields, gardens, stables, painting, music and books.

This movement rejected symbolism and advocated simplicity, sincerity and a love of life and nature, qualities that Stuart Merrill attributed to the women poets whose work he commented on in an article published in La Plume in 1903.

[8] Regarding Dauguet, Merrill judges that "a great and true poet has been born to us", and compares her poem Les Croix to Verlaine's Ô mon Dieu, vous m'avez blessé d'amour.

[3] Par l'Amour won the Académie française's Award Archon-Despérouses in 1905,[15] which meant that the poet was often mentioned by literary critics, who generally compared her to Delarue-Mardrus and Anna de Noailles.

[16] For her part, Dauguet declares that she imitates only Ronsard, and gets her inspiration from the poems of Francis Jammes, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Henri de Latouche, Sainte-Beuve and folk songs.

[20] Contrary to the portrait forged by Remy de Gourmont, Dauguet insisted on appearing intellectual, cultured and literate, and on being a figure of the female elite of the Belle Époque.

[21] She is considered a great poet, but is often judged inferior to Anna de Noailles and Hélène Picard, and her use of free verse is still badly regarded.

Her book received more or less positive reviews: "a work of art and passion that places its author in the first rank of our poetesses and even of our poets" according to La Liberté,[24] Marie Dauguet has "a deeper sensitivity [than Hélène Picard]" but "her expression remains almost always imperfect" according to Le Temps.

"[28][29] Thilda Harlor, on the other hand, takes advantage of a review of À travers le voile in La Fronde to defend Dauguet, both poet and woman,[27] and Héra Mirtel sees in L'Essor victorieux the victory of feminine beauty and purity.

[28] According to Norman R. Shapiro, the poem Je voudrais qu'on m'aime, written in the first person and in the masculine, shows Dauguet's desire to be considered solely for her art, without regard for her gender.

"[37] Passions was again reviewed in the Mercure de France, but this time Fontainas was disappointed, regretting "a tendency to adulterate the purity of his rural, floral, woodland visions, by a desire to climb to more general thoughts, to the expression of philosophical conclusions.

[40][42] Fairly well known during her lifetime, thanks in particular to articles dedicated to her in the Mercure de France, Dauguet was the subject of a few studies at the beginning of the 20th century, before falling into oblivion.

[3] She uses evocations of Hindu or pagan divinities such as Maya and Pan, as well as ancient Greek myths, from which she borrows names (Mainalo, Erymanthus, Cypris)[3] or creatures (nymphs, fauns).

Indeed, the direct environment of the poet, who grew up "in the midst of nature",[4] is a central theme in her work, reflecting her attachment to the earth and her pantheistic vision of the world.

[65] Michel Décaudin makes no mention of symbolism, but considers her to be comparable to naturism only in appearance, emphasizing the absence of heroism and grandeur in her work.

[67] She wrote to critic Pierre Quillard, after the publication of a review of Par l'Amour:[68] "You mentioned imitation in connection with some of my poems, likening them to the works of Jammes.

[68] Contemporary critics nevertheless note the proximity between Jammes and Dauguet, who lived far from Paris, had a rustic lifestyle and shared a love of nature and a strong attachment to their homelands.