Comments by Jonathan Swift, who was at Trinity College Dublin with her husband, suggest that she grew up in conditions of poverty and obscurity.

She married Peter Davys, master of the free school of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and had two daughters both of whom seem to have died in infancy.

Despite her lack of family connections, she had a number of socially prominent friends, including Margaret Walker, daughter of Sir John Jeffreyson, judge of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland).

"[4] Her Familiar Letters, which satirises the upper classes and their political affiliations, is an example of a successful epistolary novel before Samuel Richardson.

Her writing is often direct, even blunt: for example, Sir John Galliard, the main character in The accomplish'd Rake, a debauched womanizer, is presented without euphemism.