Volume one (xxviii + 622 pages) consists of the text (largely a set of identification keys, with brief status notes for each species).

Volume two (194 pages) contains 2040 line-drawings of whole beetles and features referred to in the keys (390 of these were taken from Spry and Shuckard's 1840 publication The British Coleoptera Delineated but the remainder were drawn by Joy).

"[1] A reduced-size reprint was produced by E. W. Classey in 1976, and again in 1997, while Pisces Conservation released an electronic version in 2009, solving a longstanding problem of availability.

According to a 1932 review in Nature, William Weekes Fowler's standard work The Coleoptera of the British Islands (1887–1891, 1913) was "beyond the means of most students and collectors of insects", while A Practical Handbook offered a much more affordable option.

[4] British coleopterists refer to the book colloquially simply as "Joy".