On 12 April 1827, shortly before he died, Blake wrote to George Cumberland thanking him for trying to sell copies of Blake's illuminated books and his recently published engraved illustrations to the Book of Job. Blake had first executed the Job illustrations as watercolor drawings for Thomas Butts around 1805, followed by a duplicate set for John Linnell, who commissioned him to engrave the series in 1823.

Three years later, Blake had twenty-two line engravings that looked very different from the tonal prints then popular. Indeed, they even looked different from engravings, his own included, for they were not executed in the standard “mixed method” technique, in which designs were first etched and then finished as engravings. In this technique, which Blake mastered as an apprentice, the design’s outline was traced with a needle through an acidresistant “ground” covering the copper plate and then etched with acid. The engraver went over these slightly incised lines with burins (metal tools with square or lozenge-shaped tips used to cut lines into the plate) and engraved the plate’s entire surface, uniting all parts in a web of crosshatched lines.