Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson began publishing before the end of the eighteenth century. Books for children were her first market niche: both short fiction and instructional works. She later moved into translation and into other kinds of fiction: both full-scale novels of her own, and chapbooks or bluebooks—short, sensational fiction for the young or less-educated, of which some were original and some were condensations of novels by others, including several well-known titles. Critic Gary Kelly regards her as an exponent of 'Street Gothic': this is, works which marry the conventions of gothic with those of popular, proletarian texts.

Though her output of full-length works is not large, her entire bibliography is huge, and still imperfectly understood. By January 1822 Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson had written, said her daughter, nineteen volumes (by implication full-length ones) and more than a hundred books said to be for children: this description must include her chapbooks. She continued to publish after this date.