The papers consist of Robert Fagles's professional correspondence and translation files, primarily including revised manuscript and typescript drafts, corrected proofs and galleys, notes, financial documents, permissions files, reviews, and promotional materials for his English translations of ancient Greek and Latin texts, including Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Aeschylus's Oresteia, Sophocles's Three Theban Plays, and poems by Bacchylides and Pindar, as well as files on Fagles's book of original poetry I, Vincent. The papers provide a comprehensive picture of Fagles's career as a translator and poet from the early 1960s until his death in 2008, and most materials in the papers reflect these creative and scholarly aspects of his life. While the papers do include occasional drafts of talks at various seminars, conferences, and events that Fagles led at Princeton, his papers largely do not include files devoted to his teaching and administrative roles in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton.

Fagles kept extensive files on each of his major writing and translation projects, which include his drafts and preliminary writings, as well as related correspondence, publishing and production files, royalties and sales statements, reviews, files on theatrical productions and works in print referencing his translations, awards, and events. Correspondence files include Fagles's correspondence with fellow classicists, scholars, poets, former students, and family members, including Robert Fitzgerald, Joyce Carol Oates, Louise Glück, James Dickey, Robert Hollander, Francis Fergusson, George Steiner, and many others, primarily regarding various writing projects, although much of the correspondence is of a mixed personal and professional nature. Professional files regarding publishing, permissions, talks, and awards that Fagles kept in addition to his files on specific works are also present.