The collection consists of manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs of some books ( Along These Streets (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942), The Delectable Mountains (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927), Diary of a Dude-Wrangler (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924), Ink & Blood (NY: The Heritage Press, 1946), Philadelphia: Holy Experiment (NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1945), Powder River: Let 'Er Buck (NY: Farrar & Rinehart Inc., 1938)), plays, short stories, essays, and poems ( War Songs (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942), When I Grew Up To Middle Age (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925)) of Burt (Class of 1904), as well as notebooks containing his ideas for stories, novels, and articles. The collection also includes correspondence from editors, friends, and associates, notably Max Perkins, James Boyd, and other Princetonians, and signed copies of an author's manifesto, written by Burt in 1941 and circulated to well-known American authors, urging U.S. aid to England. The main family members represented in the correspondence are Julia Burt, Nathaniel Burt, Katharine Newlin Burt, and Alice Burt Riley.

Among various documents in the collection are wills, contracts, awards, and approximately 100 photographs (ranging in size from 25x20 cm. to 5x8 cm. and representing a number of print processes including albumen and silver gelatin prints as well as one daguerreotype) and 15 negatives of Burt and his family, as well as genealogical material about the Burt, Farmer, and Lehman families, mainly gathered by Mary Theodora Burt. A large sheet featuring the portraits of a number of Native Americans is also present. The collection also houses three boxes of tear sheets and magazines, some of Katharine Newlin Burt's manuscripts, typescripts (mainly of her short stories), and notebooks, plus small collections of the papers of Jean Brooke Burt, Nathaniel Burt, and others. Included is a reverse glass painting of William Onderdonk, a family member.