Isabella Crawford was very much caught up in the social and political currents of her time, as can be seen in her poems "Moloch," "War," "Wealth," "A Hungry Day," "A Fragment," "Malcom's Katie," "Erin's Warning, "Coming Days," "The Helot," Hugh and Ion, and those written in response to the Northwest Rebellion. Her opposition to the "Imperialistic idea" was consistent and unequivocal, and she repeatedly criticized what she perceived to be the complicity of the intellectual, political, industrial, and religious communities in the ruthless expansion of the second empire. She hated war, poverty, and hypocrisy, and if her political philosophy was not exactly Liberal, it was certainly anti-Tory. Crawford's poems of social and political criticism employ indirection and irony, often attacking conditions and large institutional structures, such as poverty, war, science, and commerce, rather than specific individuals, companies, or government offices. When her targets do become more specific, she resorts more and more to indirection and ambiguity.
