The collection consists of manuscripts, biographical notes, and correspondence, including letters to Bright from literary and theatrical figures, and family correspondence. According to her nephew and biographer, Terence de Vere White, Mary Chavelita Bright conscientiously saved the letters that she received during her lifetime, and actively collected the family's correspondence, as well as her letters to them, in the hope that one day a biographer could reconstruct the story of her life. From Bright's trunks full of letters, White selected what he felt to be representative and important samples, many of which are reprinted in full or excerpted in his biography A Leaf From the Yellow Book. The Selected Papers of Mary Chavelita (Dunne) Bright is apparently the collection of materials from which White worked when writing his book.