This collection includes nine letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as letters of Louis Agassiz, Amos Bronson Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, John Lothrop Motley, Charles Sumner, and John Greenleaf Whittier. In addition, there are two incomplete manuscripts by Emerson and one document from the Liverpool Custom-house signed by Nathaniel Hawthorne as Consul for the United States. The collection also includes the corrected typescript, index, and page and galley proofs for Thomas Franklin Currier, A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (New York, 1953) which was edited by Professor Tilton. Also, some early correspondence and photographs of the Tilton family and friends. There are letters from the actors Annie Louise Ames, Richard J. Dillon, and Hans L. Meery to Tilton's grandfather, Bernard Paul Verne, as well as photographs, tintypes, and daguerreotypes of the Verne family and friends.

This collection consists of copies of correspondence, articles, diaries, memoirs, and other manuscripts by and about the Blackwell family. Also, a small group of papers, including correspondence, documents, photographs, and printed papers, about the Rice family of New York.

Correspondence, research notes, articles, clippings, photostats, and photographs. These files concern his interest in Pierre Bayle, Antoine Arlier, and the Renaissance in Provence, as well as the Romanic Review, philology, French, Spanish, and celtic studies. Among the correspondents are: Philippe Berthelot, Nicholas Murray Butler, F.R. Coudert, John H. Finley, the Prince de Ligne, Curtis Hidden Page, William B. Parsons, and Aime ́Puech.