In the judgement of Roger Lancelyn Green: Mary Louisa Molesworth typified late Victorian writing for girls. Aimed at girls too old for fairies and princesses but too young for Austen and the Brontes, books by Molesworth had their share of amusement, but they also had a good deal of moral instruction. The girls reading Molesworth would grow up to be mothers; thus, the books emphasized Victorian notions of duty and self-sacrifice.

This volume is titled for its first story – The Thirteen Little Black Pigs – but it contains eight delightful tales from Mrs. Molesworth, not thirteen little black pigs. There’s Right Hand and Left, a tale of sybling rivalry, and things even more unsettling; A Shilling of Halfpence, the story of an old woman to whom shillings and halfpence are serious money. Children’s’ fiction from an amazingly talented Victorian writer.