Correspondence, journal, notebooks, drawings, personality studies and school work of Leland Jr., and condolences to Senator and Mrs. Stanford regarding the death of their son. The correspondence and journal relate primarily to family travels in Europe and activities at home in San Francisco and Palo Alto, to his interests in archeology and collecting (including a scrapbook of commemorative Civil War envelopes), and to his education. Also includes correspondence between Jane Lathrop Stanford and William T. Ross, one of Leland Jr.'s tutors.

This collection consists of manuscripts and printed materials created by the Nobel Prize winning author John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr., by members of the Steinbeck family, and related colleagues and friends. About half of the items in the collection consist of John Steinbeck’s correspondence, including both original signed letters as well as carbon copies. The collection is rich in Steinbeck family history as well, including the original diary of his grandfather, John A. Steinbeck, written while in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, and journals of Almira Steinbeck, his grandmother, during her trip to Jaffa.

Consists of correspondence (including one letter from Ambrose Bierce to a family member), photographs, maps, field notes, receipts, dispatches, telegrams, newspapers, and printed material. Material chiefly about the Civil War career of Bierce as a surveyor as well as his extended family in Indiana, especially sister Almeda Sophia Bierce Pittenger (the original source of this collection), father Marcus Aurelius and brothers Albert and Addison Bierce.