While Cambridge began writing in the 1870s to make money to help support her children, her formal published career spans from 1865 with "Hymns on the Litany" and "The Two Surplices", to 1922 with an article "Nightfall" in "Atlantic Monthly". According to Barton, her early works "contain the seeds of her lifelong insistence on and pursuit of physical, spiritual and moral integrity, as well as the interweaving of poetry and prose which was to typify her writing career." Cato writes that "some of her ideas were considered daring and even a little improper for a clergyman's wife. She touches on extramarital affairs and the physical bondage of wives."