The publication was the first of an intended quarterly series described rather grandly in an order form accompanying the first issue as being ‘For the public concerned with the integrity of Art and Letters’. This went on to state: "A group of poets and plastic artists who, confronted by the pressure of commercialised standards, desire to maintain the integrity of poetic imagination, have recently united to exchange their views and for the presentation of their works to sympathetic circles in the English-Speaking World."

The introduction has comments from all the participating writers and artists, including Moore who ‘suggested that a congenial atmosphere in which contemporary art could flourish is more than ever needed to facilitate the crystallisation of proper classical forms for each artist’s individual emotional glow.’

Of the contributors, the artist and novelist Leon Underwood was the most likely to have invited Moore to participate, as the idea for the magazine was conceived at meetings held in his studio. He had founded the Brook Green School of Art in Hammersmith, London, in 1921, where later both Moore and Eileen Agar had joined in the drawing classes. 

In The Island neither work is titled, each print being referred to as ‘a wood engraving by Henry Moore’. The woodblocks for both prints survived Moore’s move from London to Perry Green in 1940 and were rediscovered, still in good condition, by Gérald Cramer in 1961. CGM 1 and 2 are both woodcuts, produced from side-grain blocks, as opposed to wood engravings which are made from end-grain blocks. They were subsequently editioned by Fequet et Baudier, Paris 1962, in editions of 60, numbered 1/50 to 50/50 and I/X to X/X, CGM 1 on Japon nacré 198 x 284mm, and CGM 2 on Japon teinté 190 x 280mm. Each image was titled at this time and both editions were published by Galerie Gérald Cramer, Geneva 1966.

- David Mitchinson, Henry Moore Prints & Portfolios, Cramer, Geneva, 2009.