In 1788, John Marshall published Midsummer Holydays; or, A Long Story, which is credited to Wilkinson, a claim substantiated in the publication Visits to the Parsonage; or, the Juvenile Assembly.
[1] For some years she earned an income from a circulating library, acquired with financial and networking assistance from Lady Charlotte Finch, but this failed after 1811.
She took in boarders, taught at Whitechapel Free School in Gower's Walk in eastern London, later served as a schoolmistress at Bray in Berkshire and started a day-school herself.
In 1820, while struggling to support herself with a parlour shop as well as selling tape and picture books for children, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
In 1824, the Royal Literary Fund provided five pounds towards her medical care; as a result, she underwent two surgical operations in St. George's Hospital.
[1] Wilkinson wrote about 50 chapbooks, a third of them were adaptations of existing romances, a few original novels, including The Thatched Cottage; and a school textbook and various other works for children.
[3] Many of her works were abridgments of novels by authors such as Henry Fielding, Matthew Lewis, Walter Scott, Ann Radcliffe, Amelia Opie and James Porter.