This collection contains manuscripts by various historical figures and lesser known writers. Items range from an illuminated manuscript leaf from approximately the 16th century, to a check to Eleanor Roosevelt from the Griffith Park Democratic Women, to Yoshiko Tanabe’s letter from a Japanese internment camp in the 1940s. Materials are primarily written in English, with Latin and Japanese texts. Correspondence from literary figures such as English poet Matthew Arnold, nature writer Mary Austin, novelist Pearl S. Buck, and American food writer M. F. K. (Mary Frances Kennedy) Fisher are a part of this collection. Some notable figures in the collection include United States Presidents John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Washington, as well as correspondence by scientists Albert Einstein and Louis Pasteur. There are letters by French businessman, artist, and traveler Jean Beraud-Villars, Pomona College graduate and administrator Robert J. Bernard, landscape gardener and landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, and American cartoonist Gluyas Williams. Also included in this collection are the William R. Stokes Civil War papers which are comprised of certificates of commission, army pension documents, E. H. Gelston and Company correspondence, attorney Allan Rutherford correspondence, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers correspondence, and personal papers.