It was Elizabeth Barrett Browning who encouraged her to write novels. Agnes Tremorne appeared in 1861. Her four subsequent novels were The Cost of a Secret (1863), The Woman I Loved and the Woman Who Loved Me (serial 1862, book 1865) (narrated by a male), Nora and Archibald Lee (1867), and The Crown of a Life (1869).British Library Catalogue. These have been described as "quirky and sometimes laboured." The first concerns a woman artist in the period of struggle for Italian independence. Her writing often concerned women's occupations and independence, female artistic genius, mesmerism and spiritualism, and moral rather than physical beauty.Orlando Project. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
