Letters on literary, political, cultural, personal, and family matters. Includes substantial discussion especially of the publication of Lowell's poems in Briggs's journal, but also of the slavery question and other political issues of the day. Also discussed are recently published poems and novels, recent paintings, the activities of portrait painter William Page (a friend of Briggs and Lowell), and the character of Edgar Allan Poe, who contributed to the Broadway Journal.

Including a letter from Sandusky, Ohio on the ravages of frontier diseases, and on Kit Carson; Sizer family (including Samuel Sizer) scrapbook of political editorials and correspondence (1839-1863) by Thomas J. Sizer, with slavery as a particular subject.