Correspondence, publicity material, and scrapbooks, together with memoranda, research notes, speeches, articles, drafts of books, lists, surveys, reports, printed matter, photographs, and other material documenting Bernays's career as a pioneer in the field of public relations and the development of that profession and its influence on American society. Bernays represented leading figures and organizations in the arts, finance, health, industry, philanthropy, and world and national politics. Much of the collection was used as the basis for Bernays's memoir, Biography of an Idea (1965).

Topics include the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Edison's invention of the electric light (1929); the stock market crash of 1929 and the Depression; President Herbert Hoover's Emergency Committee for Employment and Committee on the Cost of Medical Care; New York City mayoral election of 1940; economic conditions, government agencies, international politics, and loan campaigns during World War II; postwar corporate and theater industry development in New York City; Jawaharlal Nehru's efforts to regain American goodwill following India's neutrality during the Korean War; and the Vietnamese conflict. Includes material on Bernays's public relations work for the automobile, bread, brewing, magazine publishing, pharmaceutical, and radio broadcasting industries. Also includes material on his interest in environmental affairs, the Edward L. Bernays Foundation, and such social issues as crime, cigarette smoking, and aging.

Family papers (1831-1993) include correspondence between Bernays and his wife, Doris Fleischman Bernays; a draft of her book, A Wife Is Many Women (1955); and letters and other papers of or relating to Bernays's uncle, Sigmund Freud, and other members of the Freud and Bernays families.

Clients include Allied Chemical & Dye Corporation, American Nurses' Association, American Psychological Association, American Tobacco Company, Ballets russes, Bank of America, Book Publishers Research Institute, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, Cartier (Firm), Columbia Broadcasting System, Committee for America Self-Contained, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (Paris, France, 1925), General Motors Corporation, Jacques Seligmann & Co., Light's Golden Jubilee (1929), Mack Trucks, Inc., Mayor's Committee for the Commemoration of the Golden Anniversary of the City of New York, Philco Radio and Television Corp., Procter & Gamble Company, United Brewers Industrial Foundation, United Fruit Company, United States Information Agency, United States Sugar Beet Association, and Ward Baking Company.

Correspondents include Paul Bern, Sam Black, Frances Payne Bingham Bolton, Lucius M. Boomer, Daniel J. Boorstin, Homer E. Capehart, Jacques Cartier, Willoughby S. Chesley, Myron M. Cowen, George Creel, E. A. Filene, Sigmund Freud, James Watson Gerard, Norman Bel Geddes, Amadeo Peter Giannini, Eric Frederick Goldman, George W. Hill, Herbert Hoover, Hubert H. Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson, Otto Hermann Kahn, Marc Klaw, Alfred A. Knopf, Gypsy Rose Lee, Ivy L. Lee, Erich Leinsdorf, Sinclair Lewis, Clare Boothe Luce, Henry Robinson Luce, William McChesney Martin, Joseph V. McKee, H. L. Mencken, David Page, William S. Paley, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, George H. Phelps, A. N. Spanel, Arthur B. Spingarn, Lawrence E. Spivak, Albert Payson Terhune, Robert F. Wagner, Henry Agard Wallace, William B. Ward, and Edmund S. Whitman.