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The collection documents the life and work of poet and author Dachine Rainer (pseudonym of Sylvia Newman) and her relationships with other literary figures, particularly Rebecca West. Material includes correspondence, writings, personal papers, photographs, printed material, and a computer disk.

As a major repository for P.T. Barnum related material, the Bridgeport History Center has amassed a large collection of circus material. This has included amassing circus route books, which list the performance locations and show details for each show in a given year. These early route books provide useful information to early circus ventures in America, starting in the 1870s and going into the 1890s.

Collection consists of audio recordings, originally recorded on reel-to-reel tape and audio cassette. Many of the recordings are of poets reading their work or the work of others at literary events held by the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery in New York City. Also includes recordings of poets reading their work and being interviewed on Susan Howe's radio shows on WBAI Radio in New York. Miscellaneous readings recorded in Connecticut and elsewhere are present. The collection includes audio publications Black Box No. 12 and BREATHINGSPACE/77.
The recordings include readings by the following authors: Russell Banks, Regina Beck, Ted Berrigan, Elizabeth Bishop, Ed Friedman, John Godfrey, Ted Greenwald, Barbara Guest, John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs, Dale Herd, Bob Holman, Fanny Howe, Carole Spearin McCauley, Douglas Messerli, Eileen Myles, Charles North, George Oppen, Maureen Owen, Ron Padgett, Charles Rezkinoff, Adrienne Rich, Ed Sanders, Ron Silliman, Jack Spicer, and Virgil Thomson.

The Argus Book Shop Correspondence consists of the shop's "author correspondence" files holding letters between Ben Abramson and his staff and more than four hundred writers, artists, printers, critics, and illustrators. While some of the folders hold single or just a few letters, Abramson had more extensive relationships with many writers and artists, including John Austen, Faith Baldwin, March Cost, Frederic Dannay, Norman Davey, Rhys Davies, August Derleth, Robin Douglas, Joan Marshall Grant, W. G. Hardy, Claude Houghton, William McFee, Henry Miller, Frank Cheyne Papé, Louis Paul, Frederic Prokosch, William Saroyan, Harold Sinclair, and John Steinbeck. Hundreds of Abramson's typed carbon replies are present in the files; in them, he discusses business and literary concerns, along with his philosophies and opinions on a wide range of topics. While the lack of financial, inventory, vendor, and publishing records keep the collection from being a complete record of the Argus Book Shop, the correspondence files present reveal how Ben Abramson developed business and personal relationships with authors, illustrators, and shop patrons, and in particular with British authors, the obstacles he encountered while conducting business during World War II.
The collection also includes, in Series II, more than forty undated literary essays, poems, and book reviews which may have been submitted for an "Argus miscellany" that Abramson often discussed in his correspondence but apparently never produced. The writings do not appear in Abramson's journal Reading and collecting, and likely date after 1938. The Argus Book Shop correspondence files were acquired by Philip D. Sang (1902-1975), a Chicago businessman, philanthropist, and collector of historical and literary manuscripts, who then donated the material to Yale.

The collection consists of writings, correspondence, personal papers, and printed material, documenting the work of avant-garde writer and publisher Michael Fraenkel and his publishing company Carrefour Press, as well as the work of his wife Daphne Fraenkel who continued as director of the publishing company after Fraenkel's death and their literary executor Michael Peter Harris.

The Walter L. Pforzheimer Collection of Historical Manuscripts contains approximately 500 manuscript documents, circa 1370s-1870s, consisting of letters, legal documents, and other manuscripts written or signed by European heads of state, government, diplomatic, military or church officials, or literary authors. Most materials are French, including documents signed by French royalty and nobility, 14th-18th centuries. Many French manuscripts date from the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, including printed Revolutionary government documents completed in manuscript. A small amount of similar documents from other European countries and the United States are present. Some documents contain evidence of previous ownership, such as annotations, collectors' bindings, or bookplates. Also present are materials relating to Pforzheimer's research and collecting, 1920s-circa 1960s, consisting of card files, biographical notes, engraved portraits, and vendor descriptions.

Correspondence, writings, photographs, drawings, and other personal papers by or relating to Edmond Plauchut. The materials document Plauchut's literary works, his travels, and his life at George Sand's Nohant estate. Writings include early poems; manuscripts for the book Autour de Nohant (Paris: Calmann Lé́vy, 1897), the study Les anciennes provinces de France: Le Berry, and his unpublished memoir Les malheurs d'un homme heureux; a travel diary; and a humorous narrative of his adventures in the Philippines with drawings by Spanish artist Franciso Lameyer. Visual materials include caricatures of Plauchut by Maurice Sand and Francisco Lameyer, photographic portraits, and posters advertising performances at the Théâtre de Nohant, a puppet theater built by Maurice Sand.

The collection contains 121 unused bookplate specimens designed by Vytautas O. Virkau, including ex-libris for both individual and institutional patrons.

Thirteen large photographs of Cambodian and Vietnamese people. The individuals in the photographs have all been affected by the Vietnam War in some way. In addition to the Vietnam War, some of the individuals in the photographs from Cambodia were also affected by the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot.