Series consists of four contains of audio-visual materials and microfilms. here are four boxes. The first container contains microfilm and audiocassettes, for which a full list of items descriptions is found. The second container contains unsorted and uncounted personal photographs of Edel and his friends. The third container contains design and layout materials for some of Edel’s books. The fourth container contains oversized materials from other series.

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 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 ephemera related to Edel.

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 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 assorted financial records from Edel.

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 contains correspondence related to Edel's research on James and inquiries regarding James's correspondence, arranged into alphabetical files by correspondent.

Series consists of Edel's correspondence related to research on Henry James. Included are letters from some personal friends and other contemporaries of James, such as Percy Lubbock and Edith Wharton. Also included are over 1,500 pages of correspondence dating between 1937 and 1955 with Allan Wade. Other correspondents include Caroline Kipling, Anita Leslie, Sir Shane Leslie, and Theodora Bosanquet, James's long-time amanuensis. The series also contains correspondence with some James family members, including Michael James, Alexander James, Frederika (Mrs. Alexander) James, Maggie (Mrs. Samuel Spruul) James.