[4] She was educated at Friends School in Hobart, but when the family moved to Sydney by 1902 where her father joined the Evening News she was taught by governesses.

[5][6] At age nine, she wrote to "Aunt Mary", editor of the Children's Column in the Perth weekly, the Western Mail, sharing a very short story called "The Clock".

[7] The following year she began writing to "Dame Durden" (Ethel Turner), who in December 1899 accepted her story "Earwigs and Apricots" for publication in Australian Town and Country Journal.

[14] The reviewer for the Adelaide Mail wrote "Vera G. Dwyer can write a really good story, and if this is her first book we shall look with interest for further work from her pen".

The Sun used "Vera Dwyer Fails" as a subheading,[22] while the Newcastle Morning Herald wrote that it was "not a novel that one can conscientiously make a pleasant fuss about".