Delia Bacon withdrew from public life and lecturing in early 1845, and began to research intensively a theory she was developing over the authorship of Shakespeare's works, which she mapped out by October of that year. However a decade was to pass before her book "The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded" (1857) was to see print. During these years she was befriended by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and, after securing sponsorship to travel for research to England, in May 1853, met with Thomas Carlyle, who though intrigued, shrieked loudly as he heard her exposition.