The contents are as follows.

(i) Two letters of the portrait painter George Watson to the Earl of Buchan, patron of the arts, 1807, 1815. (Folio 1.)

(ii) Letter of the painter David Roberts to the architect Thomas Hamilton, 1831. (Folio 5.)

(iii) Letters to David Roberts from David Ramsay Hay, the decorative artist and writer on art, 1837, 1840, 1845-1855, undated, with one from Thomas Leverton Donaldson, the architect and author, 1842. (Folio 7.)

(iv) Correspondence of David Ramsay Hay with John E Ingpen relating to Hay's view of the 'Harmonic Law of Nature' in architectural design, 1860-1861. (Folio 121.)

(v) Letters to Alice Boyd of Penkill Castle chiefly from the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868-1880, undated. Most of these are published in ‘Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’ (Oxford, 1965-1967), edited by O Doughty and J R Wahl. The other letters to Miss Boyd are from her close friend, William Bell Scott, 1869-1870, undated, two from Christina Rossetti, 1879, 1892, and one from William Michael Rossetti concerning his sister's illness, 1894, with a related obituary notice and funeral card, 1895. (Folio 184.)