She published several novels and a highly regarded biography of Henry Watkins Allen, governor of Louisiana during the years of the American Civil War.

In 1876, Dorsey, a widow, invited Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederate States of America, to visit her plantation, Beauvoir, and use a cottage there.

[3] There, Dorsey excelled in music, painting, dancing, and languages, quickly gaining fluency in Italian, Spanish, German and French.

[citation needed] In 1852, Ellis married Samuel Worthington Dorsey, an older man who was a member of a prominent Maryland family.

His father Thomas Beale Dorsey had accumulated large cotton plantations in the Tensas Parish region, which Samuel inherited.

[4] She published her first fictional work in 1863–1864 in the Southern Literary Messenger, which serialized her novel Agnes Graham, which featured a heroine modeled on herself.

[5] The romantic novel had a young woman fall in love with her cousin, whom she planned to marry until learning about their common blood line.

The success of the serials prompted her aunt Catherine's Philadelphia publisher, Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, to republish the work in book form after the Civil War.

[6] Other fictional works of Dorsey include Lucia Dare (1867), with a heroine modeled on her own experiences in fleeing Louisiana for Texas during the war.

[citation needed] Soon after her husband died in 1875, Dorsey learned that Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, was ill and bankrupt.

)[citation needed] Impoverished after his imprisonment, the Davises had been living with their eldest daughter and her family in Memphis, Tennessee.

Dorsey was instrumental in his success, organizing his day, motivating him to work, taking dictation, transcribing notes, editing and offering advice.