The collection consists primarily of incoming correspondence, including typed and holograph manuscripts, postcards, Christmas cards, photographs, newspaper clippings, autographs, and a calendar. The materials are arranged alphabetically by correspondent.
Outgoing correspondence is interfiled with the incoming correspondence.
Robert Haven Schauffler's wide circle of friends and professional associates is well documented in this collection. Correspondents include musicians, composers, authors, family members, scholars, and admirers. The correspondence from Fritz Eichenberg, Clare Leighton, and R. H. Sauter include original lithographs and woodcuts printed on cards. In his capacity as musician and biographer of Beethoven, Brahms, and Schumann, Schauffler also received correspondence from such figures as the composer Edwin Grasse, Alfred Einstein, Pablo Casals, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Gregor Piatigorsky, the German concert pianist Elly Ney, Leopold Stokowski, Joseph Szigeti, and Arturo Toscanini. Other subjects touched on in the collection include the anxiety of German citizens before the outbreak of World War II and their attempts to leave the country, public taste in and reception to literature, the didactic qualities of literature, publishing, the effects of European travel on the American abroad, writers' colonies, the establishment of Israel as an independent nation, the military, college life, and marriage.