Edith Howitt Searle emigrated with her family from Victoria to New Zealand when she was 15. She became Head Girl at Christchurch Girls' High School in 1879, where her academic ability was noticed by the principal, Helen Connon, an early advocate of education for women. Connon encouraged Searle to apply for university, and in 1880 Searle won a university junior scholarship to attend Canterbury College. After winning an additional scholarship, Searle graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1884 and a Masters degree with first-class honours in Latin and English the following year.
Searle became a teacher in Wellington and married Joseph Penfound Grossman, also a teacher, on 23 December 1890. Joseph Grossman was convicted of fraud in 1898 and was jailed for two years before later becoming professor of history and economics at Auckland University College. Edith Grossman tutored at university and travelled in Europe for ten years during this period, and began to publish novels which explored her feminist ideals and the plight of colonial women.
Grossman worked in the women's movement for many years, and helped to found the Canterbury Women's Institute in Christchurch in 1892, and the Lyceum Club in London. In addition to her novels, Grossman wrote a biography of her former high school mentor, Life of Helen Macmillan Brown (c.1905). Between 1897-1918 she also worked as a freelance journalist for newspapers and journals in New Zealand and Britain.
