One volume is covered in green binding, and is dated 25 December 1852. It is 'Mother's Christmas Book'. The first page is decorated with mistletoe. Subsequent pages are decorated with floral and natural themes. Some of the drawings are initialed 'HP'. There are lines entitled, 'The Elswick villains', 'To a soot flake', 'A legend of Marsden rocks', 'A paragraph on poetry', 'The Hanoverian brothers', 'The policeman's soliloquy', and 'A dream'.
A second volume is covered in maroon binding. It is undated, but is entitled 'A Christmas Offering for our Mother'. The pages are decorated with sketches of plants, birds, and children. Some of the drawings are initialed 'HP'.There are lines entitled, 'Sketches of a journey through Dreamland', 'Lines written in the Vatican. A fragment', 'The letter Box', 'King Cole', 'The philosophers', 'The Devil's water', 'The sea', 'Music', and 'New Year's Eve'. One of the illustrations, shaded with pencil, and accompanying 'The philosophers', may be an early form of photographic image (perhaps a calotype, or salted-paper print).