The collection consists of the papers of Houston. His papers include many poetry notebooks spanning the years 1932 to 1994, drafts of several of his published volumes of poetry, such as Sonnet Variations (1962), For the Remarkable Animals (1970), and The Importance of the Unicorn(1992), and manuscripts of other poetical and prose works including chapters for an unpublished novel, Thomas Fantasy. There is correspondence (1925-1994) with his family, friends, writers, publishers, and organizations in which he had an interest, including Mildred Chase, the Greenwich Symphony, the Hill School, Peyton Harrison Hoge, his mother, Mary S. Houston, Dolores Kendrick, the New York Center for Visual History, for which Houston served on various committees, the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University, where Houston was involved in encouraging the interest in poetry at the University, and Jonathan Williams of the Jargon Society.