She chose ‘Austral’ as her first literary pseudonym, but later wrote under the name of Mrs Glenny Wilson.
Between 1875 and 1880 she had five children and began publishing sketches, verses and short stories. These appeared in the Australasian and in English and American journals, including Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Temple Bar and the Spectator. Her work attracted sufficient interest to warrant the publication in London in 1889 of a collection of poetry, Themes and variations. This was favourably reviewed in Britain and was reprinted in 1895 in an enlarged edition. A second collection, A book of verses, was published in 1901 and reprinted in 1917. She was particularly pleased when two of her poems, ‘Fairyland’ and ‘A spring afternoon in New Zealand’, appeared in a children’s reading series produced by the New Zealand government. Although a number of critics noted an uneven quality in her later poetry, a survey of early New Zealand women writers, published in 1909, praised her subject matter and style: ‘She sings of love and home and motherhood, and paints the Maori landscape with grace and power’.