Lindsay and Blakiston Company was founded by Robert Lindsay and Presley Blakiston, and published a small list comprising theological and literary titles until the 1860s when the firm began to specialize in medical textbooks. Lindsay retired in 1882 and the firm became P. Blakiston Son and Company; following the death of Presley Blakiston in 1898 his son Kenneth M. Blakiston became president and the company's name became P. Blakiston's Son and Company. When Kenneth died in 1937 Horace G. White became president and in 1939 the firm was renamed The Blakiston Company.
Blakiston became a subsidiary of Doubleday, Doran in 1944 and issued a series of popular budget novels under the Triangle Books imprint. Some works of Australian novelist Maysie Greig were reprinted by Blakiston in the 1940s.
In 1952 Blakiston moved to New York, and in 1954 it was purchased by McGraw-Hill Book Company, who continued the Blakiston imprint until 1967.