After leaving school she stayed on her parents' property, until she moved to Melbourne in her early twenties.

During World War I she wrote articles on feminist issues and arguing against conscription for Victorian publications.

She was a member the Victorian Socialist Party and the Women's Political Association.

[2] She wrote stories, articles and verse for magazines and periodicals, sometimes under the pseudonym Alpenstock.

She wrote three novels between 1921 and 1925 under her own name, but fearing prejudice against her as a woman without a university education, publication of her two last works in verse, Moles do so little with their privacy and The wonder and the apple, were published under the pseudonym E. Their publication was arranged by her friend Miles Franklin.