The correspondence presented in this edition comprises 276 private letters or sections of letters dated from 1739 to 1762. The earliest surviving letter from Hurd to have been traced is addressed to John Potter and is dated 15 April 1739. It was written when Hurd was nineteen and in his fourth year at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he had begun to study for an M.A. The correspondence covers the following eighteen years at Emmanuel and six years when Hurd was rector of Thurcaston, in Leicestershire. The year 1762 has been taken as the concluding date for this earlier part of the total correspondence and marks a turning point in Hurd's life. In this year he published his most famous work, Letters on Chivalry and Romance, which, in the opinion of many modern critics, makes Hurd a significant figure among the “pre-romantics”. After its publication, however, Hurd's interests as he rose in the church became less literary, as does his later correspondence.

There are six distinct groups of letters within the body of Hurd's correspondence to 1762. The first of these is the collection of letters addressed to Potter: 27 have survived, 26 of them covering the years 1739 to 1748 and one dated 1756. A group of 37 letters sent to the Macro family (Cox, Mary and Edward) run almost concurrently with these from 1741 to 1758. The largest section of the correspondence also dates from the early 1740s: these letters are addressed to Sir Edward Littleton. There are 93 written between 1744 and 1762; other letters to Littleton (31 not included in this edition) span the years 1763 to 1801.

Three further series of letters make up the bulk of the remainder of the correspondence. The recipients were William Mason, Thomas Balguy and William Warburton. Of the letters addressed to Mason 21 survive in their entirety, and fragments of 18 more were transcribed by Hurd's nephew, Richard Hurd. The latter is responsible for having destroyed the originals from which these fragments were taken, and 81 other letters from Hurd to Mason covering the period 1747 to 1790. The earliest letter of those that now remain, is dated 7 May 1747. Hurd's letters to Balguy date from 18 August 1749, and comprise a group of 18, the originals of which were recently discovered and sold at auction in 1984.