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The Boswell Collection contains the correspondence, diaries, and manuscripts of author James Boswell; estate records, letters, personal and professional papers, and other materials documenting the lives and careers of ten generations of Boswells and their possession of the barony of Auchinleck; and correspondence relating to the political career of Alexander Bruce, Earl of Kincardine.

Correspondence, writings, speeches, diaries, clippings, printed matter, sermons, and other papers of two centuries of Beecher family members. The papers relate principally to Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), popular 19th century clergyman and orator, and members of his family. Among those represented are his father, the Reverend Lyman Beecher (1775-1863), clergyman; his brothers, Edward Beecher (1803-1895), educator and antislavery leader, and Thomas Kinnicut Beecher (1824-1900) and Charles Beecher (1815-1900), both clergyman and antislavery activist; and his sisters, Harriett Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe (1811-1896), author, Catherine Esther Beecher (1800-1878), pioneer educator and writer on 'domestic economy,' and Isabella Homes (Beecher) Hooker (1822-1907), well-known suffragist. Also included are papers relating to the Scoville family (mainly Annie Beecher Scoville, 1866-1953, teacher and lecturer), as well as other related families. The papers cover an extremely wide range of cultural, political, social, and religious issues and topics of 19th and early 20th century America and include correspondence from a large number of well-known men and women. The papers were previously known as the Beecher-Scoville Family Papers.

The papers consist of correspondence, deeds, account books, estate records, architectural drawings, legal papers, notebooks, commonplace books, letterbooks, scrapbooks, daybooks, and miscellaneous papers documenting the personal lives and professional careers of three generations of the Hillhouse family of New Haven, Connecticut and New York. Major figures represented in the papers include: James Hillhouse (1754-1832), Mary Lucas Hillhouse (1785-1871), James Abraham Hillhouse (1789-1841), Augustus Lucus Hillhouse (1791-1859), and James Hillhouse (1854-1938). The papers document family relationships, personal activities, the business and legal careers of family members, political interests, and the architectural design of the family residence, Sachem's Wood.

The Wilton Historical Society Wilton Historical Information Collection contains newspaper clippings and magazine articles, as well as correspondence and other original documentation that goes beyond individual or family interest to relate directly to the broader history of Wilton. The collection also houses the papers, newsletters, and minutes of select local organizations. The bulk of the collection is from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century.

Correspondence, diaries, letterbooks, financial papers, writings, scrapbooks, and memorabilia of the Farnam family of New Haven, Connecticut, 1721-1929. The papers of Henry Farnam (1803-1883), and two of his sons, Henry Walcott Farnam (1853-1933) and William Whitman Farnam (1844-1929) form this collection. The papers of Henry Farnam include personal and professional correspondence concerning his family, life in New Haven, and the building of several canals and railroads in Connecticut and the Midwest. Materials documenting the New Haven and Northampton Company, Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, Mississippi and Missouri Valley Railroad, Northern Indiana Railroad, and Peoria and Bureau Valley Railroad is arranged here. The papers of Henry Walcott Farnam include personal and professional correspondence, financial papers, writings, subject files and scrapbooks relating to his family, life in New Haven, student and teaching experiences at Yale, membership in local, state, and national academic and reform organizations, and philanthropic activities on behalf of educational and charitable institutions. The papers of William Whitman Farnam include correspondence and topical files relating to family matters, Yale University, and New Haven Park Commission activities.

Correspondence, diaries, notes and writings of George Leon and Williston Walker form the core of the collection and provide extensive biographical information. They detail the activities of a typical New England clergyman during the second half of the 19th century and provide information on national news, political events, the Civil War, slavery, financial news on currency and taxes, and daily weather conditions. Also included are records of sermons preached and pastoral records. George Leon Walker (1830-1900) was a Congregational clergyman in Portland, Maine (1858-1867), New Haven, Connecticut (1868-1873), and Hartford, Connecticut (1879-1892). He was a corporate member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and served on the commission to prepare the Congregational creed. His son, Williston Walker (1860-1922) was professor of history/church history at Bryn Mawr College (1888-1889), Hartford Theological Seminary (1889-1901) and Yale University (1901-1922). He also served as a trustee of Amherst College (1896-1922), acting dean of Yale Graduate School (1916-1917) and provost of Yale University (1919-1922).

The papers consist of correspondence, research files (including notes, transcripts, and photocopies of historical documents), writings, photograph albums, and memorabilia relating to the personal life and professional career of American historian Charles McLean Andrews; his wife, Evangeline Walker Andrews; and other family members. More than half the correspondence is between family members. Charles Andrews's education and early career are detailed in correspondence with his parents, wife, and sisters. Evangeline Andrews's correspondence with her parents; her sister, Ethel Walker Smith; her husband; and her children concerns her Bryn Mawr activities, travels, historical and theatrical interests and writing, and the activities of family members. The correspondence also chronicles the development of the Ethel Walker School. Charles McLean Andrews's professional correspondents include former students, co-authors, fellow historians, librarians, and archivists. The professional correspondence is overwhelmingly incoming and reflects more of the correspondents' careers and activities than those of Andrews. Research and writings files detail Andrews's historical interests.

The papers detail Wright's personal life and professional work. They are particularly useful for their documentation of his involvement in religious activity at Yale from 1894-1923 and in YMCA work during the first World War. Henry Burt Wright was born in New Haven, Connecticut on January 29, 1877. He received the B.A. (1898) and Ph.D. (1903) degrees from Yale University. He was a professor at Yale from 1903-1923. He was active in Christian work among university students and in the work of the YMCA during World War I. He died in Oakham, Massachusetts on December 27, 1923.

The Frederick Stoever Dickson Collection regarding Henry Fielding consists of correspondence, writings and subject files documenting research and scholarship on Henry Fielding. There are two series: Frederick Stoever Dickson Papers and Material from Other Sources.
The Frederick Stoever Dickson Papers consist of three subseries: Correspondence, Writings and Subject Files. Correspondence consists chiefly of letters to Dickson from publishers, bookdealers, journal editors, libraries and Fielding scholars. Writings includes draft and printed versions of work by Dickson and a considerable amount of periodical literature on Fielding. Subject Files contain research material, chiefly bibliographic clippings, on Fielding.
Material from Other Sources consists of two subseries: Correspondence and Writings. Correspondence contains letters from Dickson to Wilbur Lucius Cross and third-party correspondence between Cross and others. Writings consists of a small amount of periodical literature on Fielding.

The papers consist of correspondence, writings, photographs, printed material, and other papers documenting the personal lives and professional careers of the Beer family. Extensive files of correspondence and papers for family members from the 1850s through the 1980s detail the lives and activities of such family members as William Collins Beer, a lobbyist for J.P. Morgan and Company, International Harvester Company, and the government of Italy, and a close friend of Mark Hanna; Thomas Beer, a prominent American author of novels, short stories, and articles; and Richard C. Beer, a foreign service employee stationed in Hungary during the 1920s.

The papers consist of correspondence, writings, legal and financial material, congressional papers, family memorabilia, and other papers of various members of the Evarts family of Vermont, Boston, and New York. The principal figures, however, are Jeremiah Evarts (1781-1831), author, editor, lawyer, and philanthropist, and his son, William Maxwell Evarts (1818-1901), lawyer and statesman. The papers of Jeremiah Evarts relate to his work and writings on Congregational orthodoxy, his travels for the American Board of Foreign Missions, and his efforts on behalf of American Indians. His correspondents include family members, fellow members of the Yale Class of 1802, and many well-known clergymen, lawyers, statesmen, and missionaries.

The Robert Louis Stevenson Collection consists of correspondence, writings, photographs, artwork, and other material documenting the life, work, and remembrance of Robert Louis Stevenson.

The collection contains works by and about Ritson, a small quantity of correspondence, and the manuscript of the Bibliographia Scotica.

Series I, Correspondence, consists almost entirely of single letters to Charles Kent on professional and literary topics. Significant correspondents include E. L. Blanchard; F. C. Burnand, editor of Punch; E. M. Thompson; Laura Valentine; and Samuel Warren. The series also contains a letter from Lamartine praising Kent's poetry; Cardinal Manning's last letter to his mother; and copies of letters addressed to Kent from literary figures such as Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, and Lord Lytton.
Series II, Writings, contains papers related to several of Kent's works, including page proofs for Leigh Hunt as Poet and Essayist and Poems (1870); preliminary materials for Corona Catholica; several leader articles for The Sun and the Weekly Register, including an obituary prepared in expectation of the death of the Prince of Wales in 1871; and holograph versions of several poems by Kent.
Series III, Personal Papers, contains biographical and family papers; a journal kept by Kent during his travel to Rome in 1869; and a small quantity of memorabilia and other papers, including a document relating to hostage negotiations by the Paris Commune in 1870.

The principal figure in these papers is Sarah Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, whose daughter, Ulrica Dahlgren married Josiah Pierce (1861-1902). More than half the papers consists of family correspondence chiefly for the years 1824-1873. Also in included are sketchbooks, memoirs, genealogical materials, account books, legal records and autographs of Civil War generals and admirals. The correspondence of Josiah Pierce (1827-1913) who was secretary of the U.S. legation in St. Petersburg includes material documenting his service in Russia. Also in the papers is the diary (in Russian) of Ivan Timofieff for the year 1858, with an English translation. The papers of Samuel Finley Vinton, who was congressman from Ohio (1823-1837; 1843-1851) include courtship letters to his fiancée.

The collection includes drafts of writings, correspondence, photographs, scrapbooks, clippings, drawings, diaries, and audio recordings documenting the life and work of the American writer Robert Nathan. Drafts of Nathan's writings make up the bulk of the collection, and include novels, screenplays, short fiction and prose, speeches, and poetry; the writings include story ideas, or "false starts," that Nathan did not publish. Correspondence and other papers document his family relationships, in particular that with his sister Marian Kraus Sandor. Other major correspondents include Stephen Vincent Bene?t, Herbert Feis, Lawrence Kubie, Dan H. Laurence, and Marjorie Bitker. The collection also documents an exhibition of Nathan's work in the Yale University Library in 1962.

The Hawthorne collection contains correspondence, manuscripts, and personal papers documenting the life and work of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Series I, Owen Franklin Aldis Gift, is organized into three subseries: Correspondence, Writings, and Other Papers. Correspondence consists of letters from Hawthorne to others, including the reverend George Ripley and the publisher Ticknor and Fields, as well as a third party letter from Hawthorne's son Julian. There is one corrected and bound holograph manuscript of Hawthorne's Doctor Grimshawe's Secret in the hand of Julian Hawthorne.
Series II, Norman Holmes Pearson Gift, is organized into three subseries: Correspondence, Writings, and Other Material. Hawthorne's outgoing correspondence is personal and professional in nature. Noteworthy correspondents include Hawthorne's daughter Una, English merchants Francis Bennoch and Henry Arthur Bright, Delia Bacon, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Franklin Pierce, Hiram Powers, and Charles Sumner. Incoming correspondence consists chiefly of letters from literary acquaintances, such as Mary Howitt, James Russell Lowell, Herman Melville, Donald Grant Mitchell, and William Wetmore Story. Writings includes several Hawthorne manuscripts and one holograph manuscript by Franklin Pierce. Other Material includes a commission for an armed ship bearing the signature of President John Adams.
Series III, Material from Other Sources, is organized into two subseries: Correspondence and Other Material. There are several letters from Hawthorne to others, including one to Horace Mann, and two engravings.

Author, diplomat. Diaries, consular papers documenting his service in Italy and miscellaneous personal papers including correspondence with William Dean Howells and Armando Palacio Valdés, notebooks, genealogical materials, subjects files on Maria Bashkirtseff and a few papers of his son, Julian B. Bishop, who died in 1912. William Henry Bishop's diaries, which make up half the collection, are in 127 volumes spanning the years of 1874-1928 and reflect his extensive travels in the United States and Italy. His consular papers contain correspondence, notes, clippings and photographs on political and social conditions in Italy (1903-1910) with material relating to the self-styled Duca di Santa Elisabetta, 1904-1910; the Petrosino murder case, 1904-1912; public security in Sicily, 1907; the Messina earthquakes, 1906-1908; consular relations between Panama and Palermo, 1905; material on immigration from Sicily; and material on the Taraca Expedition in the Philippines. The 2012-M-035 addition to the William Henry Bishop papers include consular material, correspondence, draft manuscripts and notes from 1841 to 1930.

The Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis Papers consists of correspondence, writings, financial records, and other papers documenting the personal and professional activities and interests of the American author, editor, and collector Wilmarth Lewis and his wife Annie Burr Lewis. At their home in Farmington, Connecticut, the Lewises created a world-renowned collection of eighteenth-century print, graphic, and manuscript material related to the English author, connoisseur, and collector Horace Walpole (1717-1797), and his circle. Lewis's papers are predominantly related to his work on Walpole, his involvement with organizations including Yale University, the Thacher School, Historic Deerfield, and the National Portrait Gallery, and the Lewises' social and intellectual lives in England, New England, and Washington, D.C.

The Archibald MacLeish Collection Addition consists of material related to the life and career of the American poet Archibald MacLeish received by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library after the processing of the Archibald MacLeish Collection acquired in 1976. The Addition consists of correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, personal papers, and sound recordings documenting MacLeish and his family between 1801 and 1995.