Biblical scholars agree that the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament was written by at least 2 and possibly 3 different authors. According to Wikipedia, chapters 1-39 where written by the original historical Isaiah, sometimes called Proto-Isaiah. Chapters 40-55 were written by an anonymous author during the Jewish exile to Babylon sometime between 597 and 538 BCE, who scholars call Deutero-Isaiah. Chapters 56-66 were written even later by a post-exile author sometimes referred to as Trito-Isaiah.
Evidence for multiple authorship includes the absence of the name "Isaiah" from the text after chapter 39 and references to historical events in the past tense that are known to take place during and after the Babylonian exile. There is broad scholarly consensus on this multiple authorship theory. More details can be found here.
The relevance of this is that the Book of Mormon quotes extensively from the Book of Isaiah. Material quoted from Proto-Isaiah includes the entire chapters 2-14 and 29. Material from Deutero-Isaiah includes the entire chapters 48-54. The Book of Mormon contains many other shorter passages and paraphrases from the Book of Isaiah. A more comprehensive listing can be found in this article posted on BYU's website.
According to the Book of Mormon narrative, these extensive quotations were possible because Lehi's band carried with them brass plates that were engraved with many writings that would be included in the Hebrew Bible including the Book of Isaiah. The problem is that not all of the writings from the Book of Isaiah could have been written by the time Lehi left Jerusalem in 600 BCE. This is one of many anachronisms found in the Book of Mormon.
The Deutero-Isaiah problem in the Book of Mormon is dealt with extensively by Marc Schindler in this article on the fairmormon.org website. Schindler does an excellent job of presenting the problem. However, as a believer, he argues that it is not really a problem. His main argument is that that the chapters in question were written as prophecies in which the style is often to speak of future events as if they have already happened. Schindler provides a number of other arguments for the unity of Isaiah that seem to have been cherry-picked from fringe scholarship.
My main objection to Schindler is that he is assuming the conclusion because of his heavy investment in maintaining belief in the Book of Mormon. The scholarly consensus was arrived at without regard to how it affected the case for or against the Book of Mormon. Most biblical scholars are probably not even aware of the contents of the Book of Mormon. Consequently, I trust the objectivity of their conclusions much more than Schindler's.
I find it interesting that Schindler never suggests that Nephi may have received the Deutero-Isaiah passages through direct, independent revelation. This suggests that he believes that the unity of Isaiah is much more plausible. In my last post I discussed the inclusion of the writings of Paul in the Book of Mormon. For that case, the anachronism is so extreme that direct, independent revelation must be employed as a hypothesis to explain it. If it could happen with Paul, why not with Isaiah? This seems to amount to a tacit admission that the direct, independent revelation hypothesis is a very weak argument to be avoided if at all possible.
Apologists do not present a single, coherent theory of Book of Mormon historicity, but their point-by-point refutations of the critics' various arguments are not self consistent. On the other hand the picture of ancient America presented by archeological, linguistic, cultural, and DNA evidence is extremely consistent. Nevertheless, many believers can be satisfied with apologetics because they generally only have one question at a time, do not see the big picture, and are highly motivated to maintain belief at all costs.
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