Elizabeth Amherst was an avid fossil collector and maintained an active correspondence on the subject both before and after her marriage. Her poetry, described as "sprightly" (Greer et al. 179), would seem to have circulated mainly in manuscript, though a few poems were printed anonymously in the 1760s. They are mainly known, however, from the Bodleian manuscript, "The Whims of E.A. afterwards Mrs. Thomas."