Of her approach to biography, Rose has said: "Most people think of a biographer as somebody who accumulates facts about people's lives. . . . But I think of myself as somebody who puts the facts of people's lives into different contexts, or emphasizes shape somehow, and puts facts into new structures." A feminist critic, Rose's work has focused primarily on the lives of women. In Women of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf (1978), which was nominated for a National Book Award, Rose explores the relationship among Woolf's writing, recurring bouts of mental illness, and sexuality. Her most popular work to date has been Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (1983), a highly readable and… penetrating study of the marriages of several famous nineteenth-century writers. Her latest biography Jazz Cleopatra (1989), is a compelling study of the jazz singer and performer Josephine Baker. A collection of essays, Never Say Goodby, was published in 1991.