The papers document the life and activities of Scofield Thayer and the history of Dial Magazine under his ownership. They include the surviving Dial office files, with correspondence by Alyse Gregory, Marianne Moore, Gilbert Seldes, Kenneth Burke, and J. Sibley Watson; manuscripts, typescripts and corrected galleys of submissions to the magazine by authors including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, George Santayana, William Butler Yeats, and Glenway Wescott; and advertising material. Thayer's own papers include his extensive correspondence with these literary figures and others, including E. E. Cummings, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, and Cuthbert Wright; drafts of poetry and essays; financial papers; and documentation of his art collection.