She received a tribute for this from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote To Matilda from a Stranger in 1802,[6] comparing her to Sappho and encouraging her to continue writing poetry.

[6] Betham painted pleasant, delicate portraits, which she exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts[2] from 1804 to 1816[7][b] as a way to be financially independent from her parents who had many children to raise.

[1]: 144  Among the dozens of exhibited portraits were those of the Harriot Beauclerk, Duchess of St Albans, the poet George Dyer, Countess of Dysart, and Betham's father and other family members.

[3]: 91  It included short biographies of Mary Magdalene, Cleopatra, East Indian Bowanny, Madame Roland, and other notable historical women from around the world.

[2] Betham was also a close friend of Robert Southey and his wife, of Anna Laetitia Barbauld and her husband, and of Charles and his sister Mary.

Other acquaintances in that period were Opie, Frances Holcroft, Hannah More, Germaine de Staël, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

[3] She made portraits of the Coleridges and the Southeys and wrote a verse for the marriage of Emma Isola, an adopted daughter of Lamb, to Edward Moxon.

"[10] However, Betham gave up her literary career and returned to the country after a series of aggravations, a breakdown of health, misfortunes, and family circumstances.

[1]: 145 [11] Betham stated that she had suffered a "nervous fever" after the hard work and emotional stress of getting Lay of Marie published, and that she felt she was unjustly put into an institution without examination or treatment.

George Dyer successfully applied for assistance for her from the Royal Literary Fund, which had been established to aid authors in 1790 by David Williams.

[1]: 143 She exhibited the following paintings at the Royal Academy of Arts between 1804 and 1816:[8][7] In 1804, the male sculptor Kresilas was mistakenly identified as a woman named Cresilla by Betham, who thought "she" had been placed third behind Polykleitos and Phidias in a competition to sculpt seven Amazons for the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

[13] So Kresilas was mistakenly included in artist Judy Chicago's symbolic history of women in Western civilization, The Dinner Party.