A well regarded poet and member of Elizabeth Montagu's Bluestocking Circle, Carter was also regarded as one of eighteenth-century Britain's leading female intellectuals for her translation, All the Works of Epictetus, Which Are Now Extant (1758), a milestone in the learned achievements of women. The first publication of her collected verse appeared as Poems upon Particular Occasions (1738). The subsequent Poems on Several Occasions came out in 1762 and was subsequently reprinted in an enlarged edition. She also edited the works of her friend and correspondent Catherine Talbot in The Works of the Late Mrs. Catherine Talbot (1780).