After graduation she remained in Oxford, working as a typist, barmaid, researcher and writer until her death, at age 53, from a rare lymphoma of the brain.

"[citation needed] In 1971 Purcell co-edited (with Libby Purves, then an undergraduate student) The Happy Unicorns,[4] a volume of work by poets under 25 years old.

There is a surreal Arthurian streak to much of Purcell's work, which may owe something of its beginning to another Oxford poet with a scholarly background, Charles Williams, though she always retains a strong individuality.

The style was notably more lyrical and sonorous than many of her contemporaries, though it used an increasingly spare free verse, which was well described in a review of her last volume Fossil Unicorn (by Douglas Clark in Lynx): "Sally Purcell writes brilliant snowflakes of poems.

"[citation needed] Her books appeared from the early seventies till her death in 1998, in several cases from Peter Jay's Anvil Press.