The collection, a part of the William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana, consists of correspondence, documents, playscripts, and other writings by or relating to Goethe and his work. The major strength of the manuscript collection is its documentation of Goethe's literary reception in England and America in the nineteenth century. There are 25 letters and manuscripts in Goethe's hand, and several Faust-related items. Authors represented prominently besides Goethe include Thomas Carlyle, Frank Claudy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Faust collector Georg Ehrhardt, Walther Wolfgang von Goethe, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, University of Illinois professor Julius Goebel, Anna Jameson, Johann Caspar Lavater, Friederich von Müller, Henry Crabb Robinson, Friedrich Schiller, Carl Frederick Schreiber, Horatio Robinson Storer, Bayard Taylor, Marie (Hansen) Taylor, Karl August Ludwig Philipp Varnhagen von Ense, and Albert Wünsch.