Correspondence, drafts and printed versions of writings (box 7), manuscript notes, printed ephemera, clippings, photographs (box 2), and contractual agreements by or relating to the professional activities of Henry Seidel Canby. The collection features approximately 983 pieces of correspondence dating from 1940 through 1949 (boxes 1-6). Incoming letters and typescript carbon copies of Canby's outgoing letters concern professional matters chiefly, addressing publications by Canby during this ten-year period, including critical biographies of American authors Henry David Thoreau (1939) (box 1) and Walt Whitman (1943) (boxes 2-3), his Family history (1945) (box 6), American memoir (box 4), and the collaboration with Robert E. Spiller, Willard Thorp, Thomas H. Johnson and others on the Literary history of the United States (1948) (box 5). Correspondents include publishers, literary scholars and critics, libraries, historical societies, bookstores, family, and others. In addition to the correspondence with the collaborators already noted, there is correspondence with Gay Wilson Allen, Carl Bode, Allen French, Clifton Joseph Furness, Howard Mumford Jones, Allan Nevins, Herbert V. Prochnow, Cleveland Rodgers, Townsend Scudder, Joseph T. Shipley, Stanley T. Williams, and Frances Winwar. Publishers include Farrar & Rinehart, Houghton Mifflin Company, and Macmillan Company.