The collection includes correspondence, diaries and notebooks, manuscript drafts, photographs, research files, newspaper cuttings and other published material. They provide a near-comprehensive coverage of Dutton's public career as an author, poet, academic, editor, critic, publisher and journalist. The papers document Dutton's life as 'a man of letters' who was often researching and writing three or four books simultaneously, while at the same time compiling anthologies, editing magazines and attending conferences.