Editorial files documenting the daily activities of publishing the quarterly magazine including correspondence between editors and staff relating to advertising, disbribution, and printing; correspondence between editors and members of the editorial board; correspondence with authors of articles submitted for publication; material relating to book reviews and readers' responses to various articles; financial records; and other records.

Much of the correspondence is between editors and editorial board members. Editors include Joseph Epstein (1973-), Hiram Collins Haydn (1944-1973), Marjorie Hope Nicholson (acting editor, 1943-1944), and William A. Shimer (1932-1943). Board members include John Edwin Bakeless, Jacques Barzun, Marston Bates, Ruth Benedict, Crane Brinton, Van Wyck Brooks, Harry Woodburn Chase, Henry Steele Commager, Ada Louise Comstock, Elmer Holmes Davis, Paul H. Douglas, R.L. Duffus, Irwin Edman, John Erskine, John H. Finley, Guy Stanton Ford, Jerome Frank, Christian Frederick Gauss, Walter Gellhorn, Alan Gregg, Walton H. Hamilton, Henry Hazlitt, Richard Hofstadter, Will David Howe, Randall Jarrell, Alvin Saunders Johnson, Adam Leroy Jones, Louis Kronenberger, Joseph Wood Krutch, James McCauley Landis, Max Lerner, Burton E. Livingston, Alain LeRoy Locke, Archibald MacLeish, Dumas Malone, Margaret Mead, Perry Miller, Henry Allen Moe, Felix Morley, John W. Nason, William Allan Neilson, Reinhold Niebuhr, H.A. Overstreet, John Herman Randall, Jr., J. Saunders Redding, David Riesman, Paul Robeson, Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., Paul Bigelow Sears, Harlow Shapley, Mary K. Simkhovitch, Donald A. Stauffer, Irita Taylor Van Doren, Sumner Welles, George Frisbie Whicher, and Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge. Authors with whom editors corresponded are listed in Appendix B of the finding aid.