This collection consists of selected editorial correspondence of the New York weekly The Independent, founded in 1848 by Henry Chandler Bowen as a Congregationalist journal which later expanded in scope to include articles on literary and social topics. Successive editors were Theodore Tilton (1856-1861 and 1864-1871), Henry Ward Beecher (1861-1864), William Hayes Ward (1868-1916), Kinsley Twining, literary editor (1880-1901), and Hamilton Holt (1897-1921).

The collection contains approximately 85 letters, 1882-1899, to Kinsley Twining (1832-1901), a Congregationalist minister, William Hayes Ward (1835-1916), a Congregationalist minister, Orientalist, and professor of Latin and natural science, Miss Susan Hayes Ward, and Hamilton Holt by various contributors to The Independent. Some of the authors included are William Gordon Blaikie, Bliss Carman, Paul Leicester Ford, Louise Guiney, Tudor Jenks, Sarah Orne Jewett, Edmund Kirke, Philip B. Barston, E. C. Stedman, John Tabb for Mrs. Sidney Lanier, and others. Eight manuscripts, primarily of verse, are also present, including "On the Stairs" and "At an Easter Market" by Bliss Carman, "The House by the Side of the Road" by Sam Walter Foss, and "True Happiness" by W. J. Linton. There are also a few clipped autograph signatures and newspaper clippings.