The extended title of these volumes is 'Inculcating Morality by Entertaining Narratives”, and in the preface the Author indicates she offered them for approval to a friend who required works for girls aged twelve to seventeen that were not “too serious nor too childish....a mirror of truth and nature in which my girls may see themselves without danger to their native simplicity and without checking too harshly their natural curiosity and fancy.”
By using examples supposedly from her own experience,“ Mrs Palmerstone” provides her daughter with the moral advice thought necessary to help develop the character of a young lady , but it is never overly sweetened...the keen observation and sometimes gently biting wit of Mrs Palmerstone would not be amiss in a character from Miss Jane Austen herself. (Summary by Anne Fletcher)