The papers of Frederic Whyte (1867-1941) form a literary archive although it contains a large amount of correspondence. The letters date largely from the late-Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries and include correspondence with publishers, editors and literary agents. Correspondence also includes letters from Arthur Conan Doyle, George Bernard Shaw and correspondence with H.G. Wells.There are articles, notes and draft translations (including a manuscript draft and copy of an article 'Portrait of Cecil Rhodes' and correspondence about M.G. Sarfatti's biography of Mussolini); material for Whyte's Life of W.T. Stead, miscellaneous photographs, cuttings (including a scrapbook of press cuttings on the Boer War), book reviews, manuscript diaries, some publications and material relating to Sweden.

The White Collection, named after Robert White (1802-1874) was presented to King's College (now Newcastle University) by his great nephew George White Pickering. It is a rich source of literature as well as being strong in ecclesiastical and local history such as James Raine's writings on local history and antiquities.

There are works by John Dryden, William Hazlitt, Thomas Hood, James Thomson, Robert Burns, Mark Akenside, Thomas Chatterton, John Gay, H.W. Longfellow, Matthew Prior, John Keats, John Milton, James Hogg, John Clare, Edgar Allan Poe, George Herbert, William Cowper, Thomas Gray and the poems of Ossian as well as several works by S.T. Coleridge, including Aids to reflection (1848), Biographia literaria (1817), Confessions of an inquiring spirit (1849) and The friend (1850). Alongside the work of these distinguished authors sit English and Scottish ballads, garlands and chapbooks including some which were printed in Newcastle.

The Walmsley (Anne) Collection is named for the person that formerly owned the books. It contains poetry and prose by Caribbean and black British writers, including Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott (the Nobel Prize for Literature winner), Olive Senior and Samuel Selvon. Some of the books contain additional material such as correspondence and some of the books are inscribed to Anne by the authors.

The Ure Collection is an Anglo-Irish literature collection, with a particular emphasis on the work of W.B. Yeats, which was built-up by Peter Ure (Joseph Cowen Professor of English Language and Literature, 1960-1969).

Other writers represented in the collection include Sean O'Casey, George Moore, Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, J.B. Yeats, Oliver St. John Gogarty, G.W. Russell, Patrick Kavanagh and Louis MacNiece.

The papers held at Newcastle are a substantial repository of the personal papers and plans of Sharp. The major part of the collection consists of papers collected from Sharp's Oxford house on his death by the now-retired Professor Brenikov of this University. The papers were subsequently put into storage. Their significance realised they were deposited with the University Library Special Collections. The principal elements of the collection are as follows:

• Files of information and correspondence relating to individual texts, including unpublished works

• Files of information and correspondence relating to individual plans. This includes, for example, work on historic cities, new villages, new towns and overseas commissions and competition entries

• Original plans for many commissions

• Extensive documentation on key planning cases where Sharp appeared as a witness at public inquiry e.g. Oxford Roads, Kepier Power Station Durham, Clarendon Hotel Oxford

• Extensive books of press-cuttings on all of the above

• Typescript of an unpublished autobiography and manuscript autobiographical notes

• Typescripts of government information films, radio talks, lectures

• Documentation on unsuccessful commissions

• Correspondence regarding the formation of the Civic Trust

• Lecture slides

• Miscellaneous personal correspondence

• Creative writing i.e. poetry, novels, radio plays etc., largely unpublished

Collectively these resources demonstrate the evolution of Sharp's thinking both in terms of individual commissions and over the course of his career. They illustrate important issues about the process of undertaking planning commissions in the period e.g. fees charged, numbers of staff employed, briefs set etc. They provide a rich source of information on how commissions were received both by clients and professional and local audiences. Additionally they are a rich source of material on how competing arguments and ideologies of urban evolution were advanced.

St. Bees School, Cumbria was founded by Queen Elizabeth I in 1583 and its library was developed through donations from local gentry and clergy in the Seventeenth Century. The collection comprises mostly classical literature and theology, including 102 volumes which were printed in the Sixteenth Century, with several titles in Latin or Ancient Greek.

Alongside the classical authors sit Martin Luther's sermons; works by William Gilpin, John Ruskin, Oliver Goldsmith, Izaak Walton, James Boswell and Francis Bacon; there is a copy of Roald Amundsen's The South Pole: an account of the Norwegian Antarctic expedition in the “Fram”, 1910-1912 (1912) and C.G. Bruce's The assault on Mount Everest, 1922 (1923), as well as W.R. Calvert's Family holiday: a little tour in a second-hand car (1932).

Consists of manuscript and typescript drafts of Sean O'Brien's published and unpublished work, as well as articles and press cuttings relating to his work. Also includes O'Brien's personal notebooks from 1970 onwards, correspondence from and to O'Brien in both a personal and professional context, and miscellenous material relating to his cultural roles and activities including jobs, residencies and fellowships.

The Robinson Collection comprises incunabula, medieval manuscripts and books so the material ranges from a fourteenth-century gradual to items published in the Nineteenth Century. The collection was bequeathed by Marjorie Robinson (d. 1998), widow of antiquarian bookseller, Philip Robinson. It includes early editions of works by Dante, Boccaccio and Tasso; rare pamphlets by Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift; and is a good resource for travel literature.

Highlights include an original Gutenberg Bible leaf [1400]; a book of hours which is printed on vellum, in a brown cloth binding with blue velvet spine and metal centerpiece, corner-pieces and ornamental clasp; presentation copies of Alexander Pope's works as well as books which he formerly owned and A letter from South Carolina, 2nd ed. (1718) which provides first-hand information on the pioneer settlement of that state.