From childhood Helen had written poems, songs and prologues for private theatrical productions. After she and Caroline jointly brought out a
Set of ten Songs and two Duets, she started to publish her verse, sometimes set to her own music. Her name was not usually printed at first, but she did not stay entirely anonymous. One of her most popular ballads was
The Irish Emigrant, which was published in New York and Boston as well as in London. In this and in other work written around the time of the
great Irish famine she shows some understanding of "the destructive impact of the famine on love and the family" despite her "social distance", though one critic believes the Irish people's suffering is merely "hinted at" in this "ballad for the English middle class".
Alfred Perceval Graves, writing in the early 20th century, was more enthusiastic: "…her warm heart beats in such close sympathy with her peasant neighbours that… she writes as if she were one of themselves, while her sense of fun floats through her Irish poems with a delicate breeziness." In 1863 a play of hers was staged, and in the same year she published an account of her travels up the
Nile with her son. This poked fun at writing by lady travellers; the title
Lispings from Low Latitudes, or, Extracts from the Journal of the Hon. Impulsia Gushington echoed Frederick's book
Letters From High Latitudes. The purpose of the play was to satire travel literature, specifically that of women, during the time period. Her play,
Finesse, or, A Busy Day in Messina, produced at the
Haymarket Theatre with
John Baldwin Buckstone as one of the actors, was a success, but the writer did not go to any of the performances, nor acknowledge her authorship. Dufferin's poetry, often set to music by herself or others, reflects important concerns traceable throughout the early and middle periods of Victorian literature: a biting criticism of social class, a spotlight on Irish poverty and emigration, and a despair over loss and separation. While Dufferin infused her early and later writing with an arch wit (particularly in her social satires), the songs and poems written during the middle of her life are marked by sentimentality and often a profound sadness. In relation to her writing, the
Westminster Review gave a very good approximation of her literary skill and emotion laden works. "Of the songs and verses which have been collected in the volume it must be confessed that few of them rise above respectable mediocrity. "The Irish Emigrant" is her best song, and is full of true feeling. "Sweet Kilkenny Town" is intensely Irish, and might fittingly be sung by any of the obscure thousands from Erin who toil for bare existence in the great Republic of the West. In many of her other lyrics we find an echo of Moore, but she lacks his perfection of form and exquisite imagery. It is when she writes in the vernacular that she is in her happiest vein. She sympathised with the peasantry of the land in which she was born, and the great charm of her nature lay, not in the gift of genius—for that she did not possess—but in her sweet and loving Irish heart. That she was endowed with some dramatic power is shown by her comedy, entitled Finesse; or, a Busy Day in Messina. She cannot take rank in literature beside her gifted sister,
Mrs. Norton, but her womanhood was richer and more perfect than that of many members of her sex to whom was given "the vision and the faculty divine." It is right that the world should know something of one of the womanliest women that ever breathed, and for this reason Lord Dufferin's biography and the verses which accompany it will be treasured in many homes". Despite her nineteenth-century popularity, Dufferin's work is now largely obscured, in part by the current critical focus on her sister, Caroline Norton. ==Death==