The contents include: letters of John Leyden chiefly to William Erskine, 1797—1811, undated (folio 1); poems of Leyden, some apparently unpublished (folio 95); letters to Erskine and others regarding Leyden, written after his death, 1811-1826 (folio 120); and cuttings from Indian newspapers, 1811-1812 (folio 179).
Also included are an account in Leyden's hand of the story of Duke Richard Sans Peur and the Company of Hellequin, apparently used by Scott in the essay ‘On the Fairies of Popular Superstition’ in the ‘Minstrelsy’ (folio 90), and a pedigree of the Leyden family extracted from a letter of the poet’s brother Robert of 1826 (folio 170).
