Bound volume containing c100 letters and other miscellaneous writings (including copies of poems, newspaper cuttings, cuttings from booksellers' catalogues and biographical dictionaries, and notes in MS), with a few portraits (engravings and some photographs). The following items have been inserted at the front of the volume: 4 newspaper cuttings, Catalogue number 46 of P J & A E Dobell, booksellers (July 1925), and the address portions of 2 envelopes (1837, 1838).
The majority of the correspondents are poets, authors, academics or clergymen, mainly from the 19th century. Letter-writers include the following: Charles Hamilton Aidé; Archibald Alison (later Sir Archibald); Edwin Atherstone; James Atlay, Bishop of Hereford; Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham; Peter Bayne (Ellis Brandt); Arthur Christopher Benson; Rev Edward Bickersteth (?Dean of Lichfield); Robert Bickersteth, Bishop of Ripon; Professor John Stuart Blackie; Professor John James Blunt; Thomas George Bonney; Oscar Browning; Edward Capern; Edward Daniel Clarke; George Edward Lynch Cotton, Bishop of Calcutta; Charles Henry Olive Daniel; John Disney; John Douglas, Bishop of Carlisle; Reverend Henry Drury; Robert John Eden, Lord Auckland, Bishop of Bath and Wells; Rev John Wogan Festing, Bishop of St Albans; Rev James Fleming; Francis Fulford, Bishop of Montreal; William Nugent Glascock; Rev Sabine Baring-Gould; Eugene Jacob Lee-Hamilton; William Hayley; Charles Harold Herford; John Hoole; William Howitt; William Jerdan; Augustus Jessopp; Edmund Keene, Bishop of Chester; Charles Mackay; Halford John Mackinder (later Sir Halford); John Richard Magrath; Herbert Marsh, Bishop of Peterborough; Thomas Gerald Massey; Hugh Boyd McNeile, Dean of Ripon; John Miller Dow Meiklejohn; Rev Charles Merivale, Dean of Ely; Rev Frederick Brotherton Meyer; Richard Monckton Milnes (later Lord Houghton); Rev John Murray Mitchell; William Mitford; James Montgomery; Robert Montgomery; Thomas Moore; Rev John Morison; John Henry Muirhead; Professor Friedrich Max Müller; the Hon Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel; Charles Evelyn Pierrepont, Viscount Newark; Professor James Pillans; Sir Lyon Playfair (later Lord Playfair); Professor Richard Potter; John Critchley Prince; John Edmund Reade; William Stewart Rose; John Towill Rutt; Anna Seward (the 'Swan of Lichfield'); Mary Montgomerie Singleton (Violet Fane, afterwards Lady Currie); William Skinner, Bishop of Aberdeen; George Barnett Smith (Guy Roslyn); Robert Payne Smith, Dean of Canterbury; Robert Southey; Charles Swain; Sir Henry Taylor; John Timbs; Sir George Pretyman Tomline, Bishop of Winchester; Rev Henry Baker Tristram; John Matthias Turner, Bishop of Calcutta; Patrick Fraser Tytler; Aubrey Thomas de Vere; Paul Gavrilovitch Vinogradoff (later Sir Paul); Edwin Waugh; Gerald Valerian Wellesley, Dean of Windsor; Stanley John Weyman; Joseph Blanco White; Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen; Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta; Rev Christopher Wordsworth (later Bishop of Lincoln); and William Aldis Wright. Many of the letters are autograph and bear signatures.
Some of the letters were purchased or solicited from their writers or owners by one Thomas Hutchinson, who may also have compiled the whole volume.