The "Iconography"’s many writers lead the reader through picaresque stories about the humble as well as praising major figures. Source material included accounts from ledgers, accounting books and scraps of paper that the author said had been strewn about in unorganized piles from the floors of far flung academies and international halls of records. Much of this primary source material has been lost to time or destroyed by war. In the rare first edition, there is a one page apology made by Stokes to subscribers of the rare set of works indicating where paper stock was - by necessity of shortage - changed from the original supplier's high grade Holland paper to similar high grade stock due to the exigency of the Great War.