"[1] Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote of her memoir Personal Recollections (1841): "We know of no piece of autobiography in the English language which can compare with this in richness of feeling and description and power of exciting interest.

"[7] After this period of temporary vision impairment, she suffered permanent hearing loss at the age of ten, "due to medication she was taking for other ailments.

[9] Charlotte was aware that her marital troubles could be interpreted many ways so, to keep her privacy, "Tonna made her friends and acquaintances promise that in the event of her death they would destroy all her letters and other correspondence".

Shortly thereafter, she was deprived of her sibling's support, as, "tragically, John Murray Browne drowned in a boating accident whilst posted with his regiment in Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland, in 1829.

Despite Captain Phelan's abuse of her and their separation, after his death she took care of his mother and sister which spoke "volumes of her benevolence and Christian principle".

[11] As a woman active in public service, Tonna "began a Sunday school in her cottage, did charity work in the Irish ghetto in London, and established a Protestant Church in St. Giles in the early 1830s"[3] In early 1844, a cancerous mass appeared under Tonna's left axilla, eventually causing "her death by attacking an artery and causing exhaustion from loss of blood.

[11] Her tracts became popular because of their sheer, and deliberate simplicity; "if, on reading a manuscript to a child of five years old, [she] found there was a single sentence or word above his comprehension, it was instantly corrected to suit that lowly standard.

"[7] In The Christian Lady's Magazine, she was able to voice her interests such as "the superiority of rural over urban life, the domestic role of women, the dangers of Popery, the hatred of unions, and, of course, the urgency of being born again through Christ".

The story focused on Kate Clark, a newly hired lace runners apprentice, who faced great work obstacles such as "long hours, poor pay and lack of food" which was common amongst labour workers in London.

[13] She reflects, concerning the benefit for masters in maintaining low wages and poor conditions for the poor,...in the desperate spirit of speculation, commercial men will set no limits to the production of what they may possibly sell, to the farther increase of their growing capital; and that in the struggle for means to live by the very scanty portion of this accumulated wealth which is allowed to circulate among them, the really destitute class are as little disposed to reject the most inadequate remuneration for their heavy toil; thus at once glutting the market with labourers, and keeping down the price of work.

[14]Another popular work by Tonna was Helen Fleetwood: A Tale of the Factories which told the story of cotton mill child labour workers, which was serialised between 1839 and March 1841 in The Christian Lady's Magazine.

[15] Her concern for the social and economic conditions of women expressed in her writing helped gather support for passage of the London Factory Acts of 1844, 1847, and 1848.

[3] Sympathetic towards the Jewish community despite desiring their conversion to Christianity, she believed that "Jews might retain their traditional rituals and still reach salvation by accepting Jesus Christ as the Messiah.

[9] Additionally, other critics complained of her stories having "thin characterizations" and long tangents that disrupted the plot, but still praised her ability to describe in intense details the poor working conditions of labour workers in Helen Fleetwood: A Tale of the Factories.

"[11] In the twenty-first century, her dramatic writing was evaluated as influencing public opinion in a way that factual accounts of the suffering of children and women working long hours in factories had not.