Poems for My Children was published in July 1847 in London (Simpkin & Marshall) and Manchester (Simms & Dinham) under the name ‘Mrs Hawkshaw’. A review of the collection appears in the Athenæum on 15 January 1848, in which Thomas Kibble Hervey commends Hawkshaw's melodious tone in the delivery of the prerequisite moral instruction required of poetry written for children. ‘The absence of cant is a charming feature in the seriousness of these little songs’, notes Hervey, who highlights Hawkshaw's combination of didacticism with an aesthetic appeal designed to enchant rather than harangue her child readers. Several poems from the collection are reprinted in anthologies of children's poetry and educational readers in England, Ireland and the United States from 1847 until at least 1913: ‘Common Things’ and ‘The Wind’ are the most frequently anthologised, and reprinted in a variety of regional newspapers: Appendix B gives full details of republications.

The final stanza of ‘Common Things’ (‘There are as many lovely things, / As many pleasant tones, / For those who sit by cottage hearths, / As those who sit on thrones!’) seems to have been adopted as a mantra for egalitarian thought. In March 1853, the Essex Standard report on ‘The Bawdsey Lectures’ uses a barely amended version of Hawkshaw's words.