Part I contains correspondence, diaries, appointment books, drafts, notes and notebooks, typescripts, proofs, production material, printed matter, and other papers relating to Rukeyser's literary contributions in the fields of biography, poetry, and translation, her public speeches and classroom lectures, and her commitment to social protest in support of human rights. Documents Rukeyser's writings including her book, The Traces of Thomas Hariot, and play "Houdini," service as president of the American Center of P.E.N., and lectures for the California Labor School. Subjects include Franz Boas, Kim, Chi-ha, and the Vietnamese Conflict.

Part II supplements the material in Part I and includes holograph drafts and typescripts, outlines, notes and notebooks, trial lines, research material, and other items relating to The Orgy, The Speed of Darkness, The Traces of Thomas Hariot, and Rukeyser's translations of works by Gunnar Ekelöf and Octavio Paz. Also includes family papers.

Part I correspondents include Kay Boyle, Isabel Cerney, Eleanor Clark, Betty Eberhart, Richard Eberhart, James Edmiston, Denise Levertov, Helen Merrell Lynd, James Marshall, Monica McCall, Carson McCullers, William Meredith, Marianne Moore, William Packard, Robert Payne, Rebecca E. Pitts, Katharine Anne Porter, Miriam M. Reik, May Sarton, Bryna Ivens Untermeyer, Louis Untermeyer, Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren, Frances G. Wickes, Toni Willson, and Ella Winter. Part II contains many of the same correspondents listed in Part I. Additional correspondents include Berenice Abbott, Alexandra Docili, Peter Docili, Robert Edward Duncan, Sara Bard Field, Hallie Flanagan, Henry H. Fuller, Horace Gregory, Norman Holmes Pearson, Marie de L. Welchand, and Marya Zaturenska.