At an early age he developed an interest in literature, contributing dramatic sketches to a paper called Drama.
For a short time he belonged to a travelling theatre company, but then became a proof-reader in London, and wrote for the Monthly Magazine.
Over-work broke down his strength and, after his wife died in December 1844 of a painful illness, Blanchard entered a depression from which he never recovered.
He had a very varied journalistic experience, editing in succession the Monthly Magazine, the True Sun, the Constitutional, the Court Journal, the Courier, and George Cruikshank's Omnibus; and from 1841 until his death he was connected with the Examiner.
In 1846 Edward Bulwer-Lytton collected some of his prose-essays under the title Sketches of Life, to which a memoir of the author was prefixed.