[1] Her childhood and early youth were affected by his unsettled fortunes, but she gained a good education from various quarters and felt called to be a writer.

Introduced by Camilla Toulmin to Westland Marston, she rapidly made friends in London and found great encouragement for her stories for the young.

[2] Well established in public favour as an author, Mulock took a cottage at Wildwood, North End, Hampstead and joined an extensive social circle.

Her personal attractions were considerable at the time; people kindly ascribed to her simple cordiality, staunch friendliness and thorough goodness of heart.

Another collection, The Unkind Word and Other Stories, included a scathing criticism of Benjamin Heath Malkin for overworking his son Thomas, a child prodigy who died at the age of seven.

[2] Richard Garnett holds that "the genuine passion that filled her early works of fiction had not unnaturally faded out of middle life," to be replaced by didacticism and an increase in self-awareness.

Garnett judges Craik's poetry as "a woman's poems, tender, domestic, and sometimes enthusiastic, always genuine song, and the product of real feeling.