Several poems, particularly Lichfield ones, concerned her friend and adopted sister Honora Sneyd, in a tradition described as "female friendship poetry". Seward struck a middle path in a period when women had to tread carefully. Her work could also be arch and teasing, as in her poem "Portrait of Miss Levett", on a Lichfield beauty later married to Rev. Richard Levett. She contributed to Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson" (1791), but was less than happy with the way Boswell treated her material. Her work circulated widely.