After studies at the Royal Academy of Art in the 1880s, she pursued a successful career as an illustrator and writer, working with a number of publishing firms including J.M.

Dent and Macmillan, and jointly publishing travel books with Janet Ross, a prominent member of the Anglo-Tuscan pre-War community.

Her father was Herman Gustav Erichsen, born in Copenhagen in October 1826 who, after a 'commercial education' and travelling in Europe, came to Newcastle as a young man of just 22.

Whilst a student, she resided on New Court, Lincoln's Inn, London, (now Carey Street within the London School of Economics campus) and the Royal Academy exhibited four more of her works in 1885: Erichsen quickly gained some financial independence as a professional artist, including commissions to produce illustrations accompanying short stories in the English Illustrated Magazine.

Those studios later became part of the South-Western Polytechnic Institute and Day School, a forerunner of the Chelsea College of Art and Design.

At this time, Erichsen was friends with Bertha Newcombe, a member of the Fabian Society, and it was through her that she met George Bernard Shaw, playwright and co-founder of the London School of Economics.

She is credited in the book's preface: "I am also more particularly indebted to Miss Erichsen not only for the charm of her illustrations but for numerous interesting details relating to persons and places".

Griggs was one of the first etchers to be elected to fellowship of the Royal Academy and like Erichsen was an illustrator for the Macmillan Highways and Byways Series.

From 1912 until November 1918, Erichsen was living in the quiet Tuscan spa town of Bagni di Lucca with two companions, Evangeline Marrs Whipple and Rose Cleveland.

During the First World War, and especially after the intervention of the United States, the three women became organisers of aid work for the families of soldiers, particularly after the huge losses of the Battle of Caporetto (now Kobarid, Slovenia) in 1917.