The fonds consists of correspondence, manuscripts, diaries, research notes, memoranda, scrapbooks, photographs, critical commentaries, and news clippings. Correspondents include Rudyard Kipling, Alfred Noyes, Booth Tarkington, Willa Cather, Theodore and Eleanor Roosevelt, Vincent Massey and Odell Shepard, among others. The microfilm contains correspondence with Washington Irving Way, Mr. Yard, Miss Rittenhouse, J.R. Peck, Frederick Holland Day and W. Poillar.

The Margaret Phipps-Walker sous-fonds details a good deal of Mrs. Phipps-Walker's public career in Kingston and is especially strong in material about the Association of Women Electors. There is also a good deal of personal material, such as letters. While one had to 'read between the lines' to find much of Edward's feelings; Margaret's records show a more introspective side to her nature and include diaries written in the later years of her life.

Collections consists of Memorial Books relating to both Lorne and Edith Pierce; travel diaries; photographs; and a copy of Edith Chown Pierce's, "Canadian Glass: A Footnote to History". Nearly every Canadian literary figure of note for the period 1920 to 1960 is representedby at least some manuscript material in this collection. Among its many highlights the collection includes the letters and manuscripts of William Wilfred Campbell; Desertion in Canada by Major John Richardson; the original manuscript of William Kirby's novel, The Golden dog; manuscripts written and decorated by Wilson Macdonald; letters, manuscripts and memorabilia of Sir Charles G. D. Roberts; and the Marjorie Pickthall papers which include her diaries, letters manuscripts and sketches. Also represented are Raymond Knister, Duncan Campbell Scott, Archibald Lampman, Camille Roy, Stephen Leacock, Marius Barbeau,Audrey Alexandra Brown, Earle Birney, Katherine Hale, A. J. Pratt and Al Purdy. Some papers of artists J.E. H. Macdonald, A. Y. Jackson, C.W. Jefferys and Thoreau Macdonald are included in this collection.