Her first collection of poetry, "Ina and Other Poems," was published in Calcutta in 1856. Her second volume, published in London in 1858, was "Sorrows, Aspirations, and Legends from India." The centerpiece of this sonnet sequence is the Siege of Lucknow, which she refers to as "The Sorrow", and casts as heroes British officers Henry Lawrence and Henry Havelock, the latter a friend of Leslie's father. The work is pro-British, nationalist, and evangelical, disdaining the Bibighar massacre while making no mention of British atrocities.