The heroine is "wholly absorbed in the cultivation of Self", according to one reviewer. "Crossriggs" (1908), often considered the sisters' best collaborative work, widely read in its day and republished in 1986, is just one of the books in which they reject "the idea that a single life is a wasted life". This nicely observed picture of village life, while telling stories of love, also explores "the lonely situation of an articulate and emotional woman" for whom marriage is not the answer. In the 1920s their work seemed old-fashioned and "Beneath the Visiting Moon" (1923) was their last book. They moved from Devon to Rye on the Sussex coast and, for World War II safety, back to Perthshire in 1940. Jane never married; the sisters would not consider being parted, joking that they could only consider marriage to a Mormon. Their writing in partnership is often considered their best work, outshining their individual novels.