A great many things have been pronounced untrue and absurd, and even impossible, by the highest authorities in the age in which they lived, which have afterwards, and, indeed, within a very short period, been found to be both possible and true.

Her collection The Night-side of Nature (1848) became her most popular work and was reprinted as recently as 2000. Though set in middle-class life they had complicated sensational plots while also commenting on the predicaments of Victorian women brought up in seclusion to be mistreated by men. She married an army officer Major John Crowe (1783–1860).