Sir William Wilson Hunter made the original plans of the book, starting in 1869.

[1] The 1908, 1909 and 1931 "New Editions" have four encyclopedic volumes covering the geography, history, economics, and administration of India; 20 volumes of the alphabetically arranged gazetteer, listing places' names and providing statistics and summary information; and one volume each comprising the index and atlas.

The first edition of The Imperial Gazetteer of India was published in nine volumes in 1881.

After the death of Sir William Wilson Hunter in 1900, Sir Herbert Hope Risley, William Stevenson Meyer, Sir Richard Burn and James Sutherland Cotton compiled the twenty-six volume Imperial Gazetteer of India.

[2] A revised form of the article on India, greatly enlarged and with statistics brought up to date, appeared as an independent volume in 1893, under the title of The Indian Empire: Its Peoples, History, and Products.