The series contains Leon Edel's correspondence, with the majority before 1989. The correspondence ranges from personal to professional and literary, with letters from friends, acquaintances, scholars, authors, and publishers, such as Harvard University Press. Files that are significant either because of the correspondent or due to the extent of the correspondence include W. W. Norton, Anais Nin, Hannah Arendt, E. M. Forster, H. Montgomery Hyde, Geoffrey Keynes, and Allen Ginsberg. Many of the letters represent Edel's ongoing work to acquire copies of Henry James's correspondence and seek out information about the author from his contemporaries. Also includes a number of letters related to various lectures given during the 1960s and 1970s.

Series consists of drafts, proofs, and corrected manuscripts of Edel's extensive publications on Henry James, as well as for the text of a CBC documentary series on Henry James. Also includes manuscripts, notes, and corrections for Edel's publication, "Some memories of Edith Wharton."

Series consists of Edel's notes and research files on James Joyce. Also includes Edel's publication "Joyce: The Last Journey," with revisions and related clippings and correspondence.

Series contains research materials, clippings, notes, and manuscripts on writers of the Bloomsbury Group. Includes materials on Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, J. M. Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, and Virginia Woolf, as well as an inventory of George Slater collections of Bloomsbury material. Series also contains manuscripts, proofs, and corrected proofs of Edel's publication "Bloomsbury: A House of Lions."

Series consists of research files on Edmund Wilson, including Edel's correspondence with Rosalind Wilson, and some files on the poet Léonie Adams and her relationship with Wilson.

Series consists of clippings, notes, papers and other ephemera collected by Edel on various significant literary figures. One thematic file is devoted to 19th-century English literature.

Series consists of files of material on Canadian literature and Canadian authors, including notes, typescripts, letters, and clippings. Includes correspondence with such figures as John Glassco, Leo Kennedy, A. J. M. Klein, Douglas Adam, and F. R. Scott. A number of folders contain material on the biologist Louis Rapkine, including correspondence. One file contains material related to the McGill Fortnightly. There are additionally notes and clippings on Stephen Leacock.

Series consists of Edel's notebooks, including address books, diaries, journals, and travel notes.

Series consists of manuscripts and typescript drafts, proofs, and corrected proofs of Edel’s publications not directly related to Henry James. Publications for which drafts are found in this series include Edel’s memoirs, “Writing Lives”, “The Artist in Old Age”, “Stuff of Sleep and Dreams”, “The ‘Two Cultures’ and the Modern Imagination”, book reviews, “Shaping and Telling: The Biographer at Work”, “”Literary Biography”, a memoir of Louis Rapkine, and others. Drafts of various lectures are also included.

Series consists of manuscripts of writings by other authors, including Harold Clarke Goddard’s “Alphabets of the Imagination”, for which Edel wrote the preface, and Sandra Djwa’s “The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F.R. Scott”.