Ada encouraged the young Ralph Mottram to begin writing, and he published two slim volumes of poetry which appeared in 1907 and 1909 under the pseudonym of "J.
Mottram was posted to the Western Front with the 9th Norfolk Regiment, the 6th Division of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in October 1915, where he took part in defending the Ypres Salient.
The American author William Faulkner greatly admired The Spanish Farm trilogy, comparing it with Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage for its insights into the reality of war.
The scholar Max Putzel summarised this by stating: "Mottram had given Faulkner an example for dealing with war by indirection, understating or disguising the powerful emotions Crane had boldly undertaken to summon up".
During World War II he was a British Council representative to the United States Airforce division based in Norfolk.