After university Grigson travelled around Italy, and lived for three months in Florence. On her return to the UK she became the assistant to Bryan Robertson, the curator at the Heffer Gallery in Cambridge; an interest in painting, silver and textiles led her to apply for positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, but she was unsuccessful. She worked in a junior capacity in an art gallery on Bond Street; she thought the watercolours were old-fashioned, and she later said that "I wished to rip everything off the walls and hang up by Ben Nicholson". She began writing art reviews for the "Sunderland Echo", covering subjects such as fine pottery, the Renaissance and the work of Clarkson Frederick Stanfield. In 1953 she became an editorial assistant at the publishing company Rainbird, McLean, a position she held for two years, during which time she was the research assistant for the poet and writer Geoffrey Grigson. He was married, and twenty-three years older than she, but they began a relationship and shortly afterwards moved in together in Broad Town, Wiltshire. He and his wife did not divorce; his estranged wife refused to grant him one. Instead, in the mid-1950s, McIntire changed her name by deed poll to Jane Grigson.