She reused several literary topics that are closely connected with her life, including geographical locations, such as Essex, the North of England and the City of London.
Another recurring theme is the sciences, particularly chemistry and alchemy, which appear in over half of her novels, undoubtedly using her brother's professional experiences and education: Oswald Silberrad was a renowned early 20th-century chemist.
[1] Her works were frequently published in reprint series, decent but inexpensive copies which catered for the needs of the increasing numbers of potential readers, particularly among the suburban middle classes.
Not only does she take up and mix popular 19th-century genres such as melodrama, romance, and Gothic fiction, but she is also preoccupied with late Victorian and Edwardian concerns such as class and gender.
The emerging 'New Woman' and the growing universal suffrage movements led Silberrad to place different female characters in the center of her fiction.
This gives the aristocratic spaces he inhabits a certain utopian quality which is at once affirmative of the aristocracy and conscious of the fact that as a class it is far removed from the reality of life.
This new middle class is represented by the novel's heroine, practical and resourceful Julia Polkington who fights through adverse situations and emerges victorious.
Apart from depicting shifts in the English class structure, the relationship between Julia and Rawson-Clew is also exemplary of a new orientation with respect to gender questions.
Its slow decline is visible in the Polkingtons, individuals who express selfish desires aimed at a good appearance rather than upholding moral values.
The treatment of class as well as gender questions shows Una Silberrad's penchant for advocating gradual change and middle courses.
From her early narrative texts onwards, Silberrad consistently casts female protagonists with independent and self-determined lives, who are contrasted with sets of ridiculously unemancipated women, often ludicrous striving after the 'good match'.
Silberrad's female protagonists embody an entirely different type of femininity, moving with ease in traditionally male circles, while also working self-consciously as scientists, politicians, or even self-appointed spies.
As in so many of Silberrad's texts, a pointedly modern stance in these matters is not a question of political campaigning but remains that of a state of mind.
However, while such an ending may cause some dismay for readers who had hoped for a more accentuated feminist settlement one cannot ignore the fact that within Silberrad's vision of the traditional corset of marriage gender roles and their hegemonic balance are re-negotiated and thereby self-consciously re-calibrated.
However, Silberrad's writing reveals the osmotic and thus gradual domestication of modern thinking in the wider realms of British society in the early decades of the 20th century.
The Wedding of Lady Lovell (1905) comprises short stories depicting the dissenter Tobiah who overcomes evil in other characters' lives, e.g. seemingly illegitimate relationships or domestic violence.
Echoing her frequent comparisons of the obscure practice of alchemy with modern science, Silberrad contrasts Protestant faith with rites rooted in Catholic or pagan tradition.
Fortune telling, witchcraft and fear of the occult powers of gypsies find discussion in Curayl (1906), Keren of Lowbole (1913) and many other texts.