Margaret L. Woods's obituary in The Times (London, 4 December 1945) called her "one of the most distinguished women writers of her day." Her poems, essays, and stories appeared in leading periodicals, and her books were widely reviewed. She was said to resemble a well-known portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gissing saw genius in her face. Quoted in The Times obituary, her daughter-in-law, Viola Woods, asserted she "knew nothing about what she wrote, it simply came through," and she herself once declared in a letter to E. W. Scripture that her shorter works arose from "the subliminal" but that completing them required "the critical understanding."

Margaret Louisa Bradley was born in Rugby, Warwicks, on 20 November 1855, to Marian (née Philpot) and George Granville Bradley. Daisy, as she was called by her intimates, fit comfortably in her family's world of culture and achievement. All four of her sisters...