Salkeld was born Florence ffrench Mullen in Chittagong, in what was then India but is now Bangladesh, and grew up in Ireland. Her father, a doctor in the Indian Medical Service, was a friend of Rabindranath Tagore and also introduced her to the poetry of Keats when she was six.
When she was in Dublin and her father in India, she regularly included her poems in letters to him. He had two volumes of these printed privately in Calcutta. She started writing verse plays in the 1930s, and one of these, Scarecrow Over the Corn, was staged in 1941 at the Gate with stage sets designed by Louis le Brocquy.
Salkeld contributed numerous book reviews to The Dublin Magazine.
She reviewed a wide range of books, but focused especially on contemporary poetry (for instance, in perceptive reviews of Anna Akhmatova and Pound"s Pisan Cantos). She also used her review writing to promote an interest in poetry by women, especially Irish women.
During the preparations for the Easter Rising, a room on the first floor of 130 Street Stephen"s Green which she had lent to Thomas MacDonagh was his headquarters.
