Treadwell's plays primarily feature lead female characters, the women presented vary greatly in their behavior, beliefs, and social status. Some of Treadwell's plays contain hints of autobiography from Treadwell's heritage to her extra-marital affair. Below is a chronological chart of her known works. Plays and novels Journalism Treadwell's first job as a journalist was with the San Francisco Bulletin, where she was hired in 1908 as a feature writer and theatre critic. She interviewed celebrities, such as Jack London, and covered several high-profile murder trials. Later, when living in New York, Treadwell covered the murder trials of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray whose stories influenced subsequent plays. Treadwell also wrote two popular serial stories for the Bulletin, one based on Treadwell's under cover research about charity available to women in need for which Treadwell disguised herself as a homeless prostitute, the other was a fiction titled How I Got My Husband and How I Lost Him which provided the source material for her later play Sympathy. Treadwell traveled to France to cover the First World War; she was the only female foreign correspondent writing from overseas at that time, accredited by the State Department. Because Treadwell was not permitted access to the front lines, she volunteered as a nurse and focused her writing on the effect the war was having on the women in Europe. In 1915, Harper's Weekly published her feature Women in Black. When Sophie returned to New York, she was hired by the New York American, later renamed New York Herald Tribune where she wrote as a journalist and served as an expert on Mexican-American relations and Mexico. In 1920, Sophie covered the end of the Mexican revolution and wrote a front page piece on the flight of Mexican President Don Venustiano Carranza. In 1921, she was the only foreign journalist permitted to interview Pancho Villa. That two-day interview gained Treadwell notoriety in the journalism field as well as provided a basis for Sophie's first Broadway play Gringo and her later novel Lusita. In 1941, Sophie spent ten months in Mexico City as a correspondent for the Tribune. Years later, Treadwell wrote for the Tribune about her visit to post-war Germany. Contemporaries and context Although Treadwell was writing during the height of the Little Theatre Movement in the United States, her desire to produce her works on Broadway for mainstream audiences set her apart from her contemporaries.