The Author Files contain files relating to authors, poets, artists, translators, editors, intellectuals, journalists, literary agents, and other figures from the world of post-WWII belles lettres. Many, but not all, of the authors represented here have submitted work to, been published in, or had business with The Hudson Review. Most author files contain correspondence including incoming letters, notes, cards, and telegrams, and often carbon copies of outgoing letters from the editors, consulting editors, and other representatives of The Hudson Review. These files may also include manuscripts, offprints, artwork, internal forms and memoranda, clippings, permission requests, documents pertaining to copyright assignment, reader's reports, galley and corrected proof pages, and other materials relevant to each file subject's connection with The Hudson Review and/or its editors. Some of the most important writers, thinkers, and critics of the twentieth century are represented in these files, including Saul Bellow, Sir Isaiah Berlin, Kenneth Burke, E. M. Cioran, T. S. Eliot, Robert Graves, Wyndham Lewis, Thomas Mann, Marshall McLuhan, and Saint-John Perse. Poets are particularly well represented with files available (all containing correspondence) for W. H. Auden, Alan Ginsberg, W. S. Graham, Jorge Guillen, Robert Lowell, Hugh MacDiarmid. Marianne Moore, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams. Some of the most extensive files in this series are those concerning post-WWII American poets such as A. R. Ammons, Wendell Berry, Hayden Carruth (including several hundred letters), Dana Gioia, James Merrill, W. S. Merwin, and Louis Simpson.

These files are arranged alphabetically and concern subjects relevant to The Hudson Review, but which do not fit easily into other series. Included are files related to the incorporation of the magazine in 1946, to industry associations and organizations such as the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and the Association of Literary Magazines of America, and to secondary projects undertaken by The Hudson Review such as The Hudson Review Anthology and The Hudson Review Fellowship. Also included are research files with headings such as "Hannah Arendt" and "Exxon Corporation" that generally contain clippings, notes and other general informational materials; topical files such as "Community Outreach," and "Anniversaries"; files about institution-specific events such as "Choice/ Robert Bly Controversy," and "United States Custom's seizure of Soft Machine"; files covering events in which The Hudson Review participated such as "The West Chester Conference" and "Sewanee Writers Conference"; and files pertaining to works published in The Hudson Review that were subsequently published in different forms or utilized for film or theatrical projects such as "Indians in Overalls," and "Stalingrad Letters." These files contain a variety of material including correspondence, clippings, informational brochures, offprints, photocopies of a range of materials (especially in the files related to the research done on The Hudson Review by Peter Brazeau), inter-office memos, and other documents.