Her father, Holm Jølsen (1833–1906) was an early industrial pioneer and ran Norway's third largest match factory in Ekebergdalen between 1866 and 1886.

Short, chopped-up sentences were typical of her writing style, almost maniacally sounding, as in Biblical form, and her depictions always moved in the intersection between dream and reality.

Add to that her books which shocked her contemporaries with their open depictions of the sex lives and drives of women which caused some reviewers to assert that it had to be a man and not a woman who had written them.

[5] For most of the period since her death she has wrongly been portrayed in Norway as a representative of a contemporary class of homestead writers, when in fact only her short story collection Brukshistorier ("Factory Tales") belongs to this genre.

The quite different style which characterizes the bulk of her novels is the meandering motifs of Art Nouveau and a consistent fatalistic decadence which depicts itself in her intense and admirable authorship.

Moys, a rock band from Enebakk, has composed music to go along with Ragnhild Jølsen's texts in the album Måneskinn og tåke ("Moonlight and Mist") released in November 2009.