The book was largely written by Alexander Gilchrist, who had spent many years compiling the material and interviewing Blake's surviving friends.

[1] A second edition was published in 1880; this included additional material and revisions to the earlier transcripts of Blake's work and Gilchrist's bibliographical details.

Several of Blake's short poems, such as "The Tyger", were typeset during his lifetime and had become widely known since the author's death in 1827, having been reproduced in commonplace books by William Wordsworth and others; however, the larger corpus of his work remained in relative obscurity.

The transcriptions included the Poetical Sketches (selections), the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the Book of Thel, and unpublished poetry from manuscript as "Ideas of Good and Evil".

The work reproduced many of Blake's illustrations from public and private collections, interspersed throughout the biography and series of plates from his illuminated books.