In 1882 she started training at the teacher training college in Gorizia and graduated cum laude in 1886. She took her matura exams in Slovenian and Italian, and successfully passed the exam in Croatian and German as well. After her graduation in 1886 she worked as a teacher in the Trieste hinterland. As well as the editor of the first Slovenian women’s magazine Slovenka (Slovenian Woman) she was also the first Slovenian woman writer to publish a serial (Fatamorgana/Fata Morgana, 1898) in the prominent literary journal Ljubljanski zvon (The Ljubljana Bell). Her literary mentor was Janko Kersnik, for whom she developed romantic feelings. Their relationship was impossible because Kersnik, although he shared these feelings, was married, but it is believed that he depicted her as teacher Julka in his novel Jara gospoda (The Parvenus). After World War I she moved to Ljubljana. Her son Vladimir Bartol went on to become an acclaimed writer.

In 1927, she published her memoirs Iz mojega življenja (From my life), in which she remembered her first days in Gorizia:

“It was in October 1882 that I first got on a railway carriage and travelled to Gorizia with my father. He left as soon as he had found an apartment for me, and I had to take my entrance exam. Every subject went like a breeze; the questions they asked were much easier than what we had studied at the public school in Trieste. But German! Nothing, I could not answer a single question. They would have flunked me, had the provincial school supervisor Klodič-Sabladoski not put in a good word for me. He said I was well-versed in Slovenian and every other subject and was sure I would learn German too, if I worked hard.”