While Lever served as a cholera doctor in Clare during the 1830s, he became friends with the sporting and military novelist William Hamilton Maxwell. His enduring fascination with things military may have commenced at this time, as Maxwell was a veteran of the Peninsular Campaigns and served at Waterloo. Lever's early novels - Harry Lorrequer (1839), Charles O'Malley (1841), Jack Hinton (1843) and Tom Burke (1844), in particular - share many of the characteristics of Maxwell's work, primarily their light-heartedness, boisterousness and lack of structure.

From 1845 onwards, a significant change in style and treatment can be discovered in Lever's work. Behind this change can be detected the influence of the novelist, William Carleton. In October 1843, Carleton wrote an article for the Nation, in which he savagely attacked Lever, accusing him of reinforcing the common English misconceptions of Irish 'quaintness'. In fact, even in his earliest works, Lever had done little to disseminate 'stage-Irishness' but, from this point onwards, his tone became increasingly serious, as he sought to portray accurately and sympathetically the various stratas of Irish society. He success was most pronounced in his depiction of the Ascendancy and middle-classes, because these were the elements with which he was most familiar, as Carleton's portrayal of the peasantry reflects his own peasant upbringing.

Other writers who exerted a profound influence on Lever's writing include Sir Walter Scott, Maria Edgeworth and Honore de Balzac.

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