The papers consist of over 2000 letters written to Henry Arthur Bright from friends, colleagues, and family members arranged in alphabetical order. Principal correspondents include Robert Brook Aspland, William Robert Brownlow, William Henry Channing, Lord Charlemont, William George Clark, Sir Reginald John Cust, Charles Milnes Gaskell, Lord Houghton (130 letters), Charles Eliot Norton, and Spencer Perceval (b 1828). There are also letters from Hungerford Crewe, and the Hawthorne family, but not Nathaniel himself: Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife Sophia, and children Una and Julian. Letters to Bright's family consist mainly of photocopies.
The last box contains a few miscellaneous items: notes, an essay on ''The Characteristic Difference between Ancient and Modern Civilization' which was awarded the English prize at Trinity College, and a bound volume containing proofs of Lord Houghton's 'Notes on "Endymion"' and Houghton's introduction to the works of Walter Savage Landor in Thomas Humphry Ward's 'The English Poets 1880-1918, Vol. IV, The Nineteenth Centry: Wordsworth to Rossetti', accompanied by a letter and a note from Lord Houghton.
Bright, Henry Arthur (1830-1884), author and merchant