This collection includes letters, drafts of poems, plays, novels, reviews and lectures, as well as some of Barker's notebooks and a sketch book of drawings.  The correspondence largely consists of literary correspondence to Barker covering the years 1933 through 1964.  Of particular interest is correspondence from T. S. Eliot, Henry W. Treece, Edwin Muir, John Heath Stubbs, William Empson, John Betjeman, William Butler Yeats and Stephen Spender.  A variety of editors are also represented in the letters, including Julian Symons, Geoffrey Grigson, D. (Derek) S. Savage, John Ackerley, Jack Lindsay, John Lehmann, and Oscar Williams. 

The collection of poetry manuscripts includes about 50 different individual poems and books in various forms.  The proof and galley pages, as well as the published books (see standing volumes), often have Barker's notes, corrections and revisions, giving readers a sense of the poet's composing process, and his need to revise works even after they had been published.  Together with his notebooks, which also contain drafts of poems, the poetry manuscripts provide a fine record of the development of many poems.  There are a number of unpublished poems in this collection also.