Along with songs and plays based on the book's stories, which were first published in the New York Tribune, Hot Corn enjoyed a brief frenzy of popularity.

[3] Though it garnered some positive press for promoting morality, especially in religious newspapers (for example, the Christian Secretary of Hartford, Connecticut said "The Hot Corn stories are eloquent appeals in favor of temperance and virtue"), the book (and stage adaptations) were also the subject of much scorn by critics.

The New York Herald faulted the book for "giving minute descriptions of life in fashionable houses of ill-fame, and entering into the details of seduction, licentiousness and debauchery, with a gusto, ill concealed by the pretence of morality.

"[4] The Southern Literary Messenger excoriated the book, proclaiming that "to say that the man who deliberately writes and prints such perilous and damnable stuff deserves a place in the penitentiary, is feebly to express our notion of the enormity of his offence.

[16] At least three temperance plays in 1853-54 were staged based (at least loosely, and in varying degrees) on the stories in the book, including Little Katy; or, The Hot Corn Girl, by C.W.