The Papers illustrate the literary activity and relationship of a large group of American writers, primarily poets, between the years 1890 and 1950. Approximately 10,000 letters between Torrence (Princeton Class of 1897), his family and friends, plus manuscripts of his work and those of his literary friends, exist in the collection. In addition, there are documents, scrapbooks, diaries, report cards from Torrence's Miami College (Oxford) and Princeton University days, daguerreotypes and photographs, memorabilia, and genealogical records, some dating as early as 1833.

Torrence's career as poet, playwright, and editor ( New Republic) is documented through manuscripts and/or typescripts of his poems, plays, and short stories, lecture notes, and personal and business (editorial) correspondence. Manuscripts for Torrence's biography The Story of John Hope (1948), The Selected Letters of Edwin Arlington Robinson (1940), and his plays Abelard and Heloise, El Dorado, and The Madstone are among those present. Letters and manuscripts of numerous literary friends and other poets submitting poems to the New Republic are included in the correspondence series.

In the series for papers of others are works and correspondence of Olivia Dunbar Torrence, including her Life of William Vaughn Moody; works, correspondence, and other material about Moody, such as his The Great Divide, Letters to Harriet, and Sabine Women; Boris Todrin's At the Gate and Other Poems; Alice Beal Parson's John Merrill's Pleasant Life; Joy to my Soul and Little Ham by Langston Hughes; and a complete holograph copy of Edwin Arlington Robinson's Matthias at the Door.

Among the writers well-represented in the collection are Robert Frost, Margaret Fuller, Louis Vernon Ledoux, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Percy MacKaye, Edwin Markham, Daniel Gregory Mason, William Vaughn Moody, Josephine Preston Peabody, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Laura Stedman.