The collection contains two notebooks. The first is a collection of essays written by William L. Richardson and published as "Detached thoughts; a sort of journal in time such as our grandfather used to produce...," in 1928. The second one is an untitled journal in letter form describing Richardson's trip from New York to England and Scotland in 1904. It contains descriptions of places he visited, people he met and musings on art and literature, as well as Richardson's article "Coleridge's fourfold classification of readers."