He was educated under the supervision of his father, who was famous both for his opposition to both the Hasidic movement, and the dry scholasticism which dominated the rabbinic leadership of Poland at that time.
Especially interested in the history of the old homiletical literature, he edited the Midrash Agadat Bereshit with a number of other mostly pseudepigraphic works of similar character (Vilna, 1802), adding valuable notes.
A plagiarist, Jacob ben Naphtali Herz of Brody, reprinted this edition with the preface (Zolkiev, 1804), but was careful to omit the name of Elijah Gaon wherever the son had mentioned him.
While Abraham of Vilna shows greater interest in literature and literary questions than is found among his contemporaries, he accepts traditional attributions of authorship.
Abraham's interest in secular knowledge, quite rare in his environment, is also manifest in the writing of a Hebrew geography, Gebulot Ereẓ, published anonymously (Berlin, 1801).