[5] The American Sunday School Magazine criticised the portrayal of characters that were "not always the most natural" and labelled the work as "deficient" and therefore stated it was not suitable for young audiences.
[6] On the other hand, The London Magazine called it "a very superior work, and we have read it ourselves with much interest" and Chronicle of the Times mentioned her as having acquired an "enviable standing in the literary circles".
She explained in the introduction that she was motivated by "having been eagerly solicited by her two nephews" to write again and thinking of the interest the Jacobite rebellion could have in juvenile readers.
[1][8] She then continued to publish moral tales and in a promotion of Annals of the Family of McRoy she restated her "earnest desire to contribute toward improving the principles and correcting the errors of the rising generation".
Moncrieff explained that she did this in order to get English readers to have a sense of "the manners and habits of their northern neighbors" and to impress them with "the grandeur of the Scottish scenery".