Collection consists of pamphlets and reprints of scholarly works on Latin poetry and literary criticism, compiled by Otto Ribbeck.

This material comprises a group of official documents, and correspondence among various partners. The official documents include four articles of agreement for partnership between various Montréal companies, largely with McTavish, Frobisher and Co., 1790-1802, and a memorandum on the effect of exchange differences on the partners' shares (approximately 1826). The partners' correspondence, approximately 1792-1808, contains letters from Simon McTavish, Isaac Todd, and Alexander Mackenzie concerning provisions, business agreements and loans. A letter from William McGillivray to Mr Justice Reid discusses family matters. One financial ledger for the North West Company contains business accounts and records transactions. The bulk of entries are dated from January 1810 to November 1825, with some entries dated 1861.

Fonds consists of many examples of Szyk's illustrations in the form of prints, commercially-reproduced illustrations, and drawing studies, as well as printed ephemera. Examples of Szyk's illustrations reproduced on commercial products or other items include postage stamps, posters, book jackets, and calendars. The fonds contains ephemera related to or containing Szyk illustrations, including newspaper clippings and issues of magazines featuring articles on Szyk or reproducing one of his designs. Box 10 contains original drawing studies, mostly for the Book of Esther. The fonds also contains materials related to an exhibition on Szyk at McGill University Library held in 1954.

The fonds contains Norman Bethune's letter correspondences, including numerous letters between him and his former wife Frances Penney. The majority of the fonds consists of material about Bethune: newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, slides and negatives, an original play about his life, a documentary script, various memorabilia (e.g. commemorative stamps, brochures, pamphlets, buttons and pins, posters, fliers), and writings about Bethune's work in Canada, Spain, and China.

The collection was assembled by the Rare Book Department at McGill to group a number of anonymous poetry collections and verse miscellanies dating from roughly the long eighteenth century. These include: a volume written around 1700 containing Milton's Comus and other poems, largely elegiac; a group of 38 original poems from 1774; satires of Cambridge personalities by an undergraduate (1795-1800); a volume of poems bound in vellum written in various hands by George Colin Campbell, Miss Flaxman, Mrs. A. M. Keith, Bernard Bolton, George Tucker and others, with sketches (1817); and Lady Murray's poetry commonplace-book (approximately 1820) containing poems by celebrated authors and some original pieces.

Collection consists of an illustrated manuscript containing a map and brief guidebook to Paris landmarks, created by Nicole Allardet probably during the 1940s or 1950s. The item is inscribed to Vivienne Horne. A folded booklet on heavy grey paper, the guidebook contains twelve panels, ten of which feature a gouache illustrated vignette of a Paris landmark and a short handwritten description in white. The landmarks include the Jardin du Luxembourg, Opera House, Eiffel Tower, the river Seine, the Bois de Vincennes, Notre-Dame de Paris, the Jardin des Tuileries, the Champs-Élysées, Montmartre, and the Luxor Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. In the centermost two panels is a simple map of Paris showing the landmarks depicted.

Collection of correspondence between the years 1818 and 1828, predominantly on the matters of The Society of Antiquaries of London, addressed to Daniel Lysons, a British antiquarian and topographer. Comprises 25 letters mounted on paper. The first letter of September 5, 1818, is addressed to Samuel Lysons (1763-1818).

The collection, previously held at McGill University, contains a significant amount of information concerning the latter years of Napoleon’s reign (between approximately 1810-1815), with documents relating to the Armistice at Pleswitz and the diplomatic negotiations surrounding the Treaty of Fontainebleau, including records of day-to-day negotiations concerning Pleswitz and Fontainebleau. Diplomatic dealings between Metternich and Caulaincourt are also heavily represented. Folder 17 contains an unpublished description of the post-Waterloo Hundred Days by Caulaincourt. Caulaincourt recounts a broad narrative from the defeat at Waterloo to the Bourbon Restoration, including important descriptions of the question of succession and of the final push made by the Allies to restore Louis XVIII to the throne.

The Montreal Mendelssohn Choir Collection comprises several volumes of sheet music from the Choir’s library. The choral folios were compiled and bound into eight volumes at the time of their donation to McGill University in 1895. The estate of D. Torrance Fraser, a former Choir member, donated another four volumes of choral music in 1926 and 1927. Three volumes contain second copies of the pieces from the Choir’s library donated thirty years prior; the fourth volume donated in 1927 contains a number of pieces performed by the Choir but not found in the seven extant volumes from the Choir’s library.