This series provides an overview of Mina Kirstein Curtiss's private life and includes legal documents, an oral history, and photographs. The series also contains two bound volumes of poetry, some of which is in Curtiss's hand and the rest in another, unidentified hand. There is also correspondence pertaining to the Mina K.Curtiss Fund at Smith College, established in 1984. The financial information is extensive and includes tax returns; bills of sale, receipts, and appraisals for art and antiques; and records of donations made to various museums and libraries. Also included is a set of Curtiss's daily appointment calendars, spanning the years 1936 to 1985; the year 1939 is missing. There are also magazine articles, correspondence, drawings, legal documents, and printed matter relating to various properties Curtiss owned during her life, most of which concern Chapelbrook in Ashfield, Massachusetts. The Chapelbrook photograph albums are filed in this series because they are germane to to that particular property and because many of the photographs depict life there before Mina Stein Kirstein married Henry Tomlinson Curtiss in 1926.

This series consists of photo albums and single images of Mina Curtiss and her family; there are also several photographs of Henry Tomlinson Curtiss. Although most of the images are undated and the people in them are unidentified, they well illustrate certain aspects of Curtiss's family life and leisure activities.

This series is divided into four subseries: Family, Friends and acquaintances, Legal and financial, and Miscellaneous. In the Family subseries, letters to "Goosie" and "Pettikins" probably refer to Lincoln and George Kirstein, respectively. The bulk of the series consists of Friends and acquaintances and includes letters from many eminent figures from the literary world. Letters to family and to Smith College President William Allan Neilson are especially revealing of Curtiss's thoughts and feelings as she grappled with personal problems. Legal and financial correspondence is comprised of letters between Curtiss and the prominent Boston firms that represented her legal and fiscal interests. Since Curtiss traveled extensively, whenever practicable on incoming correspondence her whereabouts have been noted in pencil above the greeting. (See also The Tin Box Collection: Letters of Roger Sessions and His Friends, Sarah Chapin, Ed., 1992).

This series contains material relating to Mina K. Curtiss's years of teaching English at Smith College, and includes a grade book, lecture notes, and letters from students.

This series consists of diaries and journals; draft manuscripts and typescripts; research materials; artwork for illustrating Curtiss's books; book reviews, both by Curtiss and by others about her books; journal articles; fan mail, and correspondence with publishers, literary agents, and research associates. A significant amount of material in this series relates to unpublished works. Some of the artwork filed under "Manet Caricatures: Olympia" was not actually used in the published version of that article, which appeared in the Massachusetts Review in 1966. It is unknown whether Curtiss decided against using this material in the "Olympia" article, or if she intended all along to use it in subsequent vignettes or in the proposed book on Manet caricatures. Since Curtiss filed this artwork with illustrations that were used in the "Olympia" article, it has been retained there.

Material pertaining to The Midst of Life contains an untitled essay that Curtiss had identified as "background material--Midst of Life;" the essay has therefore been filed with other papers having to do with The Midst of Life. "Winter Letters," which never reached publication, was the sequel to The Midst of Life.

"Slices of Life" is a sequel to the "Past and I." Both are autobiographies, neither of which was ever published. The manuscript "Platon: Archbishop of Moscow" was originally part of "Slices of Life," but Curtiss separated it and submitted it for publication, also unsuccessfully, as a separate manuscript; the "Platon" material is therefore filed immediately after the "Slices of Life" typescript.

Much of the correspondence between Curtiss and Liliane Yacoel Ziegel, Curtiss's Parisian research associate, is in French, particularly that pertaining to Letters of Marcel Proust and Bizet and His World.

Correspondence with publishers and literary agents comprises a separate subseries due to its broad and varied content, particularly the letters between Curtiss and Al Hart of the Fox Chase Agency.

Research material for Letters Home consists of typescripts of letters soldiers wrote either to their hometown newspapers or to their families. Material pertaining to the radio program, "What's YOUR Idea," and to a column in Cosmopolitan called "Letters Home," both of which evolved from the huge success of Letters Home, is filed with other documents relating to the book.

This series consists of translations of essays and a bibliography by Saint-John Perse, as well as clippings about him; and clippings about the murder of Elliot Speer, Headmaster of the Mount Hermon School for Boys, which occurred in September 1934.